Will it be easy for Kansas City Chiefs to replace Tyreek Hill?

For years Tyreek Hill carried the Chiefs wide receiver group on his back. They tried to give him a true number two with Sammy Watkins, but we all know that he simply couldn’t stay healthy enough to be a major contributor outside of a few huge postseason games. While that lack of wide receiver production behind Hill was a source of frustration for years, it could actually be the key to the Chiefs being able to replace him.

In the four years he played with Patrick Mahomes, Hill averaged 86 receptions, 1,214 yards, and 11 touchdowns. The Chiefs aren’t going to find a receiver that can step in and provide that production next season, especially if they aren’t going to pay someone $20+ million per season. But what if we don’t look at Hill’s individual production and instead look at the production of all of the Chiefs’ wide receivers?

I went back and looked at the four seasons that Patrick Mahomes has been KC’s starter (2018-2021). I looked at the total wide receiver receptions, yards, and touchdowns for those seasons. Then I adjusted the numbers from 2018, 2019, and 2020 for 17 games to find what the average wide receiver production was for a full season of games during the Mahomes/Hill tenure in K.C. Here’s what I found (rounded to the nearest number):

• 219 receptions
• 2,911 yards
• 24 touchdowns

That’s what the Chiefs averaged from their wide receivers the past four years. If the Chiefs want to maintain their offensive production without Tyreek Hill they need their current group to match those numbers. So what might that look like and how realistic is it?

Let’s see if we can put some numbers to some names and make it work.