The first phase of the Chiefs’ offseason workout programming arrives Monday in Kansas City, but for quarterback Patrick Mahomes, it began earlier this month some 500 miles outside the city.
This isn’t really about him, though. It’s about those who joined him in Texas as he conducted his own mini-camp, of sorts.
His receivers. The wideouts have been the focal point of the roster conversation for the second straight offseason in Kansas City.
And, well, why?
Sure, it was clearly the storyline a year ago after the Tyreek Hill trade. But it’s a difficult to understand why it’s drawing the same sort of perceived concern now.
Isn’t this the same team that traded away one of the very best talents at the position, yet won the Super Bowl anyway ... days after the quarterback was still named the league’s Most Valuable Player .... weeks after he still set a new NFL record for yards in a single season?
But now they can’t replace JuJu Smith-Schuster and the eight games that Mecole Hardman played last season?
The concern about the receiver situation is excessive, and while the player-based reasoning is forthcoming in this column, the context of the broader philosophy is equally important.
The Chiefs became a better offense in 2022 when they treated wide receiver as a only-as-good-as-the-weakest-option system. They stopped force-feeding a No. 1 receiver because, well, they didn’t have one to force the ball to. That wasn’t the primary intended consequence of trading Hill, but it became just as consequential in the short-term as the draft picks did in the long-term.
Why change that philosophy now? It was more successful last season and far cheaper.
To be sure, the Chiefs need talent at wide receiver, and that will become a more important point as tight end Travis Kelce ages. The takeaway isn’t that they can win with a bunch of guys off the street. Rather, it’s that that broader strategy minimizes the need to stretch the budget for a No. 1, when in fact the combination of No. 2 and 3 is more impactful.
Plus, secondarily for teams that operate with elite quarterback (ahem, the Chiefs), there must be significant study into how effective a wide receiver on your roster became because of his own skills versus the aid of the quarterback. In the most obvious sentence of this piece, players tend to produce better when the the guy throwing them the ball is better.
Which all brings is to the prism of how we should view the current state of the Chiefs’ wide receivers room.
As mentioned, they let Smith-Schuster and Hardman sign elsewhere in free agency, Smith-Schuster with the Patriots and Hardman with the Jets. The Chiefs did not match the finances either received from their new organization, which means they are partially to blame for the two separations.
In their place, the Chiefs have made one notable addition, signing former Giants receiver Richie James to a one-year deal, and they more recently re-signed Justin Watson. These aren’t splashes.
But why did they need splashes?
They didn’t.
It’s factually true that the Chiefs had a group that was good enough to win the whole dang thing last season. Which leaves that as a good point of comparison to see where this group stands.
Hardman played 15 snaps after Week 9 last season. That’s it. He totaled 17 yards in those 15 snaps. The Chiefs were 11-1 in that stretch without him. They somehow managed.
Smith-Schuster led Chiefs receivers with 78 catches and 933 yards, making his production harder to replace. On paper. In his final 11 games including the postseason, though, he totaled 44 catches for 440 yards and just one touchdown. That’s an average of four catches for 40 yards per game over a stretch that covered more than half his season.
Here’s a statistic that might surprise you, and it enhances the reasoning for not matching the contract the Patriots gave Smith-Schuster (3 years, $33 million) — the Chiefs’ expected points added (EPA) with Smith-Schuster on the field in Weeks 10 and later was 0.15 per play. With Smith-Schuster off the field, that number was nearly double at 0.28 per play.
The sum is that the Chiefs shouldn’t act out of desperation to supplement their receiver room, because they aren’t desperate. They can be more careful, and that applies to the NFL Draft this month too. If they like a guy who falls to them in the opening round, great, but with so few receivers drawing first-round grades this class, it might not hurt to wait until Day 2. They probably should take someone in the draft, but they can afford to wait.
This just isn’t the equivalent of replacing Hill all over again, after all.
But let’s dive a little bit deeper.
For his four seasons in Kansas City, Hardman evenly split his time between lining up in the slot and lining up out wide — 51.3% of his snaps came in the slot in 2022, a number that barely fluctuated throughout his Chiefs tenure.
Which brings us to the most intriguing thing about James, who busted out for a career-best 57 catches, 569 yards and four touchdowns with Daniel Jones and the Giants last season. That breakout season coincided with a move to the slot — 84.6% of his snaps there in 2022, after just 26.6% with the 49ers in 2021.
James — and it’s still early to consider him an absolute lock for the 2023 roster, given the financial package of his deal — actually had a better rating on PFF last season than Hardman did in any of his four seasons in KC. James rated as the 24th best receiver in football on ESPN Analytics, which uses a combination of a receiver’s ability to get open (James was 24th), secure receptions (10th) and yards after catch (75th).
That isn’t the end-all, be-all metric for receivers, but it’s not meaningless, either. Smith-Schuster ranked 39th on that same list; Hardman did not play enough to qualify; and incumbent Marquez Valdes-Scantling ranked 82nd.
Skyy Moore and Kadarius Toney also did not see enough snaps to qualify. But this is a good time to introduce both into the conversation. Neither are additions, not technically, but their developments could be. It plays into all of this.
Toney arrived in Kansas City in Week 8. So using that as a starting date, he led the Chiefs in points earned per route for the remainder of the year, including the playoffs. He was at 0.086, more than double any other wide receiver on the Chiefs roster during that time frame, using data from Sports Info Solutions. Smith-Schuster was at 0.032 from Week 8 on, which actually rated behind Moore (0.036). It’s reasonable to assume Toney will be on the field more next season after a further understanding of the playbook, and the same applies to Moore, whose lack of playing time fell more into that category and less a problem with his skill-set.
The concern about Toney’s injury history is most legitimate, but one of the two players the Chiefs lost here just missed more than half the season.
Toney and Moore don’t need to carry all the production anyway. They need to increase their own production.
By about, oh, say a combined 450 yards in 11 weeks.
Reasonable? Absolutely.
