Five Chiefs who could make Kansas City unstoppable in 2022

The Kansas City Chiefs should once again be a Super Bowl contender this season, but if these five players step up they could be almost unstoppable.

Ladies and gentlemen, the wait is finally over. The Kansas City Chiefs play a regular season football game this week. This is the last Monday of the NFL offseason. Next week we will finally make the transition from speculation about what will happen to reflection on what has happened. While I can’t wait for that switch over, I’ve got one last piece of prognostication for Chiefs Kingdom before the regular season kicks off.

Last season, I debuted my first “Five Chiefs players that could make Kansas City unstoppable” piece. The premise is simple. We know the Chiefs are a good team with a real chance to compete for a Super Bowl, but if these five players have fantastic seasons it would make them almost unbeatable. The players in my piece last season were Orlando Brown Jr., Clyde Edwards-Helaire, Mecole Hardman, the starting linebackers, and Jarran Reed. If we reflect on those for a second, I think we can agree that they didn’t all hit in a way that made K.C. unbeatable.

I consider Orlando Brown Jr. to be the biggest hit of last year’s list. He struggled early in the season to adjust to KC’s pass-heavy offense, but by the end of the year, he was playing like a top ten left tackle. The bar I set for CEH was to go from a “fine” starting running back to one that really made a difference and caused defenses to game plan for him. That didn’t happen. The bar for Hardman was to become a clear and dependable starting wide receiver opposite Tyreek Hill. That didn’t happen either as Hardman remained more of an inconsistent big-play third receiver. My hope for the linebackers was that they would become a strength of the team. While Nick Bolton hit big, Anthony Hitchens was still just okay, and Ben Niemann was on the field over Willie Gay Jr. far too often. Finally, Jarran Reed did not prove to be a difference maker at defensive tackle next to Chris Jones.

So my list of players that could have made KC unstoppable last season didn’t have a very good success rate and consequently we saw the Chiefs struggle at times during the season and eventually lose in the AFC Championship Game. Here’s to hoping that this year’s list has a few more hits and that the end result is the Chiefs making it back to and winning the Super Bowl.

Let’s start this list off with the player I think has the longest shot to make a huge difference this season.