Do the Kansas City Chiefs have one of the worst offenses in the NFL?

Before I get into some offensive numbers, I want to point out that technically Silva said K.C. had bottom five offensive talent not a bottom five offense. It’s possible that Silva believes that Andy Reid is getting better production out of K.C.’s players than most other coaches would—meaning that KC’s offensive success is predicated on Reid’s system, not the talent of their players. I would counter that argument with Travis Kelce and Tyreek Hill. Those two were two of the most talented play makers in the AFC last year. Regardless, its impossible to come to a definitive conclusion on how talented a player is, it’s subjective. All we can look at is the production.

I kept things pretty simple for this. I looked at five key areas for an offense.

Points per game
Yards per game
Yards per play
3rd down conversion %
Turnovers

Here’s what the Chiefs averaged in those areas last season and their NFL rank.

Points per game: 24.3 (13th)
Yards per game: 343.0 (20th)
Yards per play: 5.5 (16th)
Third down %: 38% (18th)
Turnovers: 17 (8th)

Was the Chiefs offense great last season? No. Were they one of the worst in the NFL? No. The average NFL ranking in those five areas was 15th. That’s about as middle of the road as you can get. I simply don’t see any way you could say that last season the Chiefs had bottom five talent on offense. Their production was clearly better than far too many other teams. I was going to point out five teams that were clearly worse on offense last season but there were so many to choose from that I upped it to ten. The chart below shows the Chiefs stats and rankings in the five areas I just mentioned,f along with those of 10 other teams that were indisputably less productive last season.

If you look at those numbers, I just don’t think you can make an argument for the Chiefs being a bottom 10 offense last season. Some of you may be thinking, “Yes, they scored 24.3 points per game last year, but how much of that was defensive or special teams touchdowns?”. Well, if you take out the five defensive touchdowns and three special teams scores, the Chiefs offense still averaged 20.8 points per game which was still more than any of the ten teams listed. (It’s actually tied with Denver, but since Denver had four defensive touchdowns then KC’s offense still averaged more points.) So last season K.C. was NOT a bottom ten offense, let alone a bottom five one.

Finally, did K.C. lose enough this offseason to warrant a big drop in production in 2017?