Six improvements the Kansas City Chiefs must make for 2022

No. 2: Drops

We know Mahomes had a tough 2021 season with turnovers and plenty of inaccurate passes with some of them being underthrown and overthrown. However, even when he was on target, Mahomes dealt with a lot of dropped passes. According to Pro Football Reference’s advanced passing stats, the Chiefs had 121 “poor throws,” which was the third most.

Early in the month of December, Mahomes had 30 passes that were dropped, which led the NFL. According to Sports Radar, Travis Kelce and Tyreek Hill were first and second in the league among pass-catchers who cost their offense the most expected points from drops on December 1. According to Pro Football Reference, the Chiefs finished with 32 drops, tied for ninth-most in the NFL.

There is no doubt that Mahomes, Kelce, and Hill form the NFL’s most dangerous quarterback-tight end-wide receiver trio. We saw what the Chiefs offense did in 2018 when it produced the third-highest scoring output in NFL history. The trio was a huge reason for that. Hill has broken multiple franchise receiving records while Kelce has shattered the NFL record for most receiving yards by a tight end twice in three years. We know what this offense is capable of with this trio.

Chiefs fans saw this in the past with former wide receiver Dwayne Bowe, whose biggest struggle was holding on to the football. After a costly drop in the end zone in a low-scoring loss to Indianapolis in Week 5 of the 2010 season, Bowe went on to score 14 touchdowns and finished the league that year with an NFL-best 15 touchdown catches. Bowe’s drops did not completely go away. Even the best pass catcher drops a pass once in a while.

Andy Reid, offensive coordinator Eric Bieniemy, and the rest of the offensive coaching staff know they have the talent with boundless potential. But they need to find ways to eliminate these costly errors.