Ian Hartitz delivers the team preview and fantasy football outlook for the 2025 Kansas City Chiefs.

The 2024 Chiefs wound up finishing 60 minutes short of their third consecutive Super Bowl championship. Blowout loss to the Eagles aside, Kansas City deserves credit for winning its ninth consecutive AFC West title and for sending the Bills home in January for the fourth time in the last five years.

And yet, the team's middling +59 point differential (11th in the NFL) reflects the reality that this wasn't exactly a juggernaut offense throughout last season.

Kansas City Chiefs in 2024:

  • Points per game: 22.6 (15th)
  • EPA per dropback: +0.14 (10th)
  • EPA per rush: -0.06 (13th)
  • Points per game against: 19.2 (4th)

Fast forward to 2025, and the Chiefs are mostly leaning on hopeful offensive line upgrades and better injury luck to get back to hoisting the Lombardi Trophy—a goal that always seems within reach whenever No. 15 is healthy enough to suit up.

This brings us to today's goal: Answering key (mostly fantasy-related) questions about the Chiefs ahead of their 2025 season.

As always: It's a great day to be great.

Kansas City Chiefs 2025 Fantasy Football And Team Preview

What happened to the, you know, really fun version of Patrick Mahomes?

From 2018 to 2022, the Chiefs averaged at least 28 points per game and never ranked worse than sixth across the league. Unfortunately, things went south in both 2023 (21.8, 15th) and 2024 (22.6, 15th), as this offense has trended toward becoming a death by a thousand paper cuts sort of unit for years.

What happened to the big plays!

Perhaps it was the re-insertion of OC Matt Nagy in 2023 that caused this problem: Either way, the Chiefs have suddenly become more reliant on down-to-down consistency than anything. Overall, the Chiefs ranked fifth and sixth in rush and pass-play success rate last season. Patrick Mahomes has the lowest average target depth in the NFL (6.4) during the past two years. Sad!

Obviously this trend hasn't stopped Mahomes and Co. from winning a ton of football games, but it has resulted in him falling off quite a bit in fantasy land. He hasn't been bad, but the returns haven't exactly been what drafters signed up for. After all, we're talking about a guy who was the career QB leader in fantasy points per game through his first six seasons as a starter.

 

 

So why will 2025 be any different? Well, better pass-catcher health sure would be nice considering Hollywood Brown didn't suit up until Week 16 last year, and Rashee Rice was lost for the season in Week 4. Throw in the additional prolonged absence of Isiah Pacheco as well as Xavier Worthy seemingly hitting another level in the second half of 2024, and this year's supporting cast should be in a better position to create more explosive plays in 2025.

Patrick Mahomes Fantasy Football Outlook

Mahomes' status as one of the best QBs alive hasn't gone anywhere, but the fantasy numbers simply haven't been there in recent years. The aforementioned potential for this WR room to experience better injury luck helps, although the reality that Travis Kelce isn't playing his best football these days doesn't exactly make the involved pass catchers a particularly big strength.

Ultimately, Mahomes is the consensus QB6 in the Fantasy Life ranks because it's hard to believe someone this good will continue to put forward such meh counting numbers. I haven't overly gone out of my way to get him in drafts despite his price being cheaper than ever; just realize better injury health could at least get this group back into the league's top-10 scoring offenses.

Is Isiah Pacheco a potential diamond in the mid-round RB rat race?

Pacheco's explosiveness and tackle-breaking ability simply weren't the same in 2024, undoubtedly in large part due to coming back from a broken fibula. That said: Pacheco turned just *one* of his 83 carries into a gain of 15+ yards—the third-lowest rate (1.2%) in the league ahead of only Braelon Allen and Gus Edwards.

So yeah, not great, but this is still an RB only one season removed from posting an RB14 finish in PPR points per game. Teammate Kareem Hunt also didn't get much of anything going on the ground in the way of explosive plays last season, and the only meaningful additions this offseason were longtime 49ers backup Elijah Mitchell along with seventh-rounder Brashard Smith.

Ultimately, the allure of Pacheco comes down to his potential to handle a near every-down role in an offense that has a solid history of producing fantasy-friendly talents at the position.

 

Reminder: Pacheco racked up 18 and 24 combined carries and targets on robust 80% and 66% snap rates during his first two games of last season before getting injured.

There is some risk, though. Pacheco didn't come close to double-digit touches or a 50% snap rate during the Chiefs' 2024 playoff run, as Andy Reid was content to cycle between him, Hunt, and Samaje Perine (now back on the Bengals). While Hunt will be 30 in August, there's a lot of history there, and incoming rookie Brashard Smith does boast the sort of pass-catching chops to potentially help fill the receiving-heavy role left behind by Perine.

Bottom line: Vegas still projects the Chiefs to be one of the league's highest-scoring offenses, and the reality that elite RB fantasy production is very correlated to their team's scoring offense rank means that someone in this backfield is likely priced far too low at the moment.

Gun to head, I do believe Pacheco is the Chiefs RB worth targeting at cost (RB27 ADP). The other RBs in this range like Tony Pollard, Brian Robinson and the Steelers RBs are more certain to be in multi-back committees, whereas Pacheco's best-case runout involves him working as the Chiefs' clear-cut starting RB. The price point is closer to the floor than the ceiling.

Who will emerge as the alpha in this hopefully healthier WR room?

Let's meet our three contenders:

Rashee Rice: All Rice did during the first three weeks of last season was score 21.6 PPR points per game—a mark that would have only trailed Ja'Marr f*cking Chase over the course of an entire season! He's in special company when looking at yards and targets per route run during the first two seasons of a career. The primary concern is his recovery from a torn LCL; we probably shouldn't expect his usual level of YAC goodness early on even if he is ready to go for Week 1—which sounds increasingly likely after Andy Reid said he expects Rice to be a full participant at the start of training camp. Legal expert Drew Davenport is on the record guessing that Rice will play all of this year with his case continuing to progress very slowly.

Xavier Worthy: Whether it was the inability to stay in bounds, a case of the butterfingers, or a bad pass from No. 15, the Chiefs' rookie speedster just never quite managed to get on the same page with Mahomes when it came to downfield heaves … until literally their last try of the season. Give Worthy credit for averaging a robust 17.1 PPR points per game (WR15) from Weeks 11 through the Super Bowl, although his decrease in aDOT (11.9 vs. 7.5) reflects the potential for some of these opportunities to dry up when Rice is healthy and available.

Hollywood Brown: Brown worked as the PPR WR5 during the first six weeks of 2022 the last time that he was truly healthy. We’re talking about a 122-1,374-9 pace here—and the dude looked good while doing it. Unfortunately, this is now the third consecutive offseason that I've been forced to repeat that stat, as the injury gods have continued to be cruel to the artist known as Hollywood. Still, a full-time role seems to be on the table ahead of 2025 for Antonio Brown's cousin—maybe the 28-year-old veteran can finally get back to grooving.

Elsewhere, guys like JuJu Smith-Schuster, Skyy Moore, and rookie Jalen Royals figure to compete for extra snaps. Royals probably projects as having the most upside of the group; just realize it's awfully rare for fourth-rounders to produce too big of counting numbers at the position.

Bottom line: Rice deserves top dog treatment, but his price has churned all the way into Round 2 consideration in some offseason drafts due to the good news surrounding his injury and potential suspension. The injury part of the equation has me refraining from going out of my way to draft him over stud RBs like Jonathan Taylor and Josh Jacobs or WRs such as Ladd McConkey and A.J. Brown, but the path to high-end success is there.

I'm also not exactly lining up to draft Worthy at his WR23 price tag with a potential alpha target hog in DK Metcalf available at the same price. I also believe cheaper options DeVonta Smith and Travis Hunter are on a different (read: better) level than the rising second-year talent. Fantasy Life Projections have Worthy, Rice, and Kelce all finishing within eight targets of each other; I don't see the former's path to WR1 numbers while the latter two talents are healthy and available to soak up the bulk of the offense's low-aDOT opportunities.

Finally, Brown is a solid late-round dart carrying an affordable WR61 ADP. There's a world where he actually f*cks around and leads the room in targets after all. I wouldn't necessarily count on that happening, but hey, it's tough to complain about a WR6 price tag for someone at least projected to work as one of Mahomes' top-four targets.

Is Travis Kelce cooked?

Well, 2024 certainly wasn't his usual standard of excellence.

Kelce among 43 tight ends with 30+ targets in 2024:

  • Yards per route run: 1.43 (19th)
  • Yards per target: 6.2 (37th)
  • Yards per reception: 8.5 (37th)
  • Yards after the catch per reception: 3.5 (40th)
  • Targets per route run: 23.4% (8th)
  • Passer rating when targeted: 84.9 (37th)
  • PFF receiving grade: 70.5 (20th)
  • ESPN receiving score: 17 (43rd)

Looking at Kelce's yards per route run on a yearly basis really hammers the point home: We are no longer looking at one of the game's single-best receivers regardless of position.

But here's the thing: Kelce was by all accounts a shell of himself last year … and still finished as the TE6 in PPR points per game! And he did this despite scoring a career-low 3 TDs. This demonstrates just how fantasy-friendly raw targets and receptions can be in full-PPR formats, even if the involved efficiency isn't very good.

Bottom line: I'd be pretty shocked if the soon to be 36-year-old veteran rebounds to familiar TE1 overall heights this season, and Kelce's targets per game (4) with a healthy Rashee Rice could be a sign of his involvement when the Chiefs are fully healthy. The latter point is why I have a tough time overly buying in at his current TE6 price point, even if some good ole fashioned positive TD regression could at least return the future Hall of Famer into the position's top five.

Ultimately, younger options with similar top-five upside like Mark Andrews, Evan Engram, and David Njoku all go 10-plus picks past Kelce in more drafts than not; I've mostly only been drafting the longtime Chiefs stud when tacking on a stacking partner for Mahomes.

What passing attacks are most afraid of throwing downfield?

Well, in recent years, this one has certainly been one of them.

 

 

Overall, the Chiefs (6.4) join the Lions (6.5), Bengals (6.7), Jets (6.7) and Dolphins (6.9) as the only offenses with an average target depth under seven yards during the past two seasons. Style points be damned, there's, of course, nothing inherently wrong with this. Hell, the Chiefs and *Bills* tied for last in TDs on throws 20+ yards downfield since 2023.

Still, for entertainment's sake: Here's to hoping Mahomes' last throw of the season is a sign of more things to come in 2025.

Prediction For The Chiefs 2025 Season

The Chiefs are once again expected to work among the league's very best teams, as they join the Bills, Eagles, and Ravens as the only four squads with an 11.5 win total. It'd be easy to simply pound the over considering they have won 12, 12, 14, 12, 14, 11, and 15 games since the Mahomes era began in 2018, but I'm going to do something stupid instead and bet against maybe the single-best QB in the league: Give me UNDER 11.5 wins for a team that just went 11-0 in one-score contests last season, even if KC will still inevitably make the playoffs and prove to be a tough out for anyone.

As for my bold fantasy prediction: Isiah Pacheco reclaims his full-time starting role and supplies RB15 overall goodness thanks to renewed explosiveness on the ground and 50+ receptions through the air.