Heading into the new NFL season, there is something I’m hoping to see from the Kansas City Chiefs in their season opener against the Denver Broncos on Monday Night Football: change.
After a train wreck of a season in 2025 that featured an offense that looked slow, dysfunctional, and, at times, outright broken, this year offers the opportunity for a refresh and something new.
With Eric Bieniemy back as the offensive coordinator, new running backs and wide receivers coaches in DeMarco Murray and Chad O'Shea, a revamped running back room of Kenneth Walker, Emmett Johnson, and Brashard Smith, and supposedly a refreshed game plan, we’re expecting Kansas City’s offense to look different, but exactly how different?
The Broncos provide the perfect measuring stick.
When Kansas City faced Denver in Week 11 last year, both teams still had everything to play for. The AFC West title was still up for grabs, and the Chiefs were relatively healthy too.
So, what stood out in that game Denver won 22-19, and what might have changed now heading into Week 1?
I went back and watched every snap the Chiefs took on offense in Week 11 and found four numbers that could provide the first indication that change might be on the way.
15
Kansas City had 73 total offensive snaps in its first meeting against the Broncos, and just 15 of them—21 percent—were run plays. This time around, I expect that number to be significantly higher.
With a new bell-cow running back in Walker, an exciting rookie in Johnson, and an improved Smith as well, I think the Chiefs will be much more eager to hand the ball off than they were last season.
Given that Patrick Mahomes will be making his first start since suffering a serious knee injury and we haven’t seen him on the field in a competitive environment yet, that gives the Chiefs another reason to lean more heavily into the run game.
I still think Kansas City will be (and should be) a pass-first offense, but I’m curious to see if the pass-run ratio will be closer to 65-35 instead of the 79-21 rate we saw in Week 11.
6
Of the 15 rushes Kansas City had in Denver, only six came with Mahomes lining up under center, something that was in line with a huge source of frustration throughout the season.
Watching the Chiefs play, it seemed obvious that the run game was much more effective under center than from the shotgun, but it was something Kansas City simply refused to do. Now, with the lessons (hopefully) learned from last year, a new coaching brain trust, and a new primary running back, I’m keen to see if that seeming change is made right off the bat.
If the Chiefs plan on using Walker the same way the Seattle Seahawks used him last year, then that number will absolutely increase.
Per TrueMedia, Walker had a roughly 50-50 split between rushes from under center and from the shotgun in 2024, but his percentage of under-center runs jumped to 79 percent last year. Walker’s under-center runs had a 39 percent success rate compared to just 21 percent from the shotgun.
Under-center runs seemed like a missing element from Kansas City’s game plan last year, so will we see a new strategy as early as Week 1?
83
Of course, to have more runs from under center, you actually have to be under center, which is something the Chiefs generally opt against doing.
When the Chiefs played the Broncos in Week 11, a whopping 83 percent of their snaps were taken from the shotgun (63 out of 73 total snaps). The Chiefs didn’t take their first snap from under center until their 22nd offensive play, and they ran just 10 plays from under center in the entire game.
That lines up with the trend we saw throughout the season for Kansas City. According to Sharp Football Analysis, the Chiefs took 80 percent of their snaps from the shotgun, the third-highest rate in the NFL and 15 percentage points higher than the league average of 65 percent.
But that might not be a good thing. Of the 10 best teams in total offense last season, seven ranked in the bottom 10 in shotgun rate. The Los Angeles Rams, the best offense in the NFL, had the lowest shotgun rate of any team at 40 percent, half the Chiefs’ rate.
We’ve seen Kansas City take more snaps from under center this preseason, so I’m interested to see what that shotgun rate looks like in Week 1 compared to the Denver game last season.
7
Could we see the Chiefs run more play action in the season opener?
Patrick Mahomes dropped back to pass 58 times against the Broncos in Week 11, with 14 of those plays featuring some kind of run fake to the halfback. But of those, only seven were what I classified as hard play-action sells, as opposed to RPOs or token handoffs.
The Chiefs struggled to get opposing defenses to bite on play action last year because their run game was so toothless that they could essentially just ignore it. Per NFL Savant, Kansas City ranked 27th in yards per play (5.8 yards) and 24th in success rate (45.7 percent) on play-action plays.
But this season, things might be different.
We’re expecting to see a more potent, more explosive rushing attack this year—the kind of ground game defenses will have to account for, so could that open up a more dangerous play-action game?
Even just the threat of Walker busting off a big run, something the entire league saw him do as recently as the Super Bowl, should be enough to keep other teams honest and force them to respect the play fake, hopefully opening up the passing game in the process.
Play action only really works if you can run the ball in the first place. Now that the threat exists, will we see the Chiefs use it, if not more often, at least more effectively? Hopefully.
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