The Kansas City Chiefs have been a flawed football team for quite some time now. While the flaws have worn different masks at different stages of the season, the team's most recent masquerade in attempting to save their floundering season fell flat in a maddening 20-10 home loss to the Houston Texans on Sunday night. The Chiefs had nearly everything on the line on Sunday, and while the right things were said during the week leading up to the game, the same things were done on Sunday. Which, subsequently, is the entirety of the problem this season.
The circumstances for which we should be concerned about the 2025 Chiefs have shifted throughout the course of the season. First, it was the absence of Rashee Rice that was instantly amplified by the sudden loss of Xavier Worthy in a Week 1 loss to the Los Angeles Chargers. Along the way, the team has given us reason to be concerned about preventable penalties, defensive shortcomings, passes being dropped at an alarming rate, and injuries along the offensive and defensive lines.
Perhaps all along it wasn't that those things were happening at different times. Now, with the team sitting at 6-7 on the year, with a four-game winning streak and an act of God needed to get the team into the postseason picture, we know the truth. This team has been fatally flawed from the beginning, and the individual symptoms have only intensified at different times, but have always been concurrently present.
How the Chiefs slipped from dynasty to disarray
When an NFL franchise tastes the level of success that the Chiefs have been privy to over the course of the last six years, the downfall can almost always be attributed to a seismic organizational shift. The Patriots dynasty ended the minute Tom Brady walked out the door. The Cowboys managed to win a Super Bowl immediately after he left, but when Jimmy Johnson exited the picture for Dallas, the winning ways followed suit in short order. The Steelers of the 1970s essentially aged out of dominance.
But what has changed with the Kansas City Chiefs that has taken them from a 15-2 season in 2024 that culminated with a failed attempt at a Super Bowl three-peat to a floundering 6-7 team with no realistic postseason hope and even less of an identity? Sure, Travis Kelce is nearing the end of his Hall of Fame career. But Andy Reid, Steve Spagnuolo, and the Chiefs coaching staffs are predominantly all still around. Patrick Mahomes is squarely in his prime and could still be considered the best in the NFL at the quarterback position if you're in the business of knowing football as opposed to generating hot takes and trying to get clicks from proclaiming 30-year-old first-ballot Hall of Famers as “washed.”
So what has really changed to facilitate such a precipitous decline? Well, nothing. And that's now very evidently the problem.
Reading between the lines is not necessary to see what is happening in Kansas City. Watch Rashee Rice and Xavier Worthy's body language when things do not go their way. Take a look at Travis Kelce scrapping with opponents after the whistle, letting the emotions that have propelled him as a leader for over a decade become a burden that he, at times, can't reel in. Take a look at the thousand-mile stare you see from Patrick Mahomes as yet another well-placed pass careens wildly off the hands of yet another wide receiver or tight end, more than likely into the hands of a defensive passerby.
The hidden signs of a Chiefs team losing belief
Andy Reid and the coaching staff have lost this team. This is not an indictment on Reid himself, but hear me out. The errors we see week in and week out—from penalties, to drops, to missed assignments, to half-assed routes when the ball's not coming your way—are signs and symptoms of a team that has lost belief and lacks accountability. Those are strong words, but they are less of an indictment on the players than you may think.
Throughout the course of the Chiefs’ dynastic run, they have played a ton of football games. Since the league added a 17th regular season game in 2021, the Chiefs have played a minimum of 20 football games per season, playoffs obviously included. Eighty-one games in the last four full seasons, to be exact. It would be easy for a team to become physically exhausted with this much additional work put on their bodies. But it would be easier for a coaching staff to fail to innovate, to tweak processes and schemes, to keep things new and interesting. If, by chance, there is less of an emphasis on those pieces of the puzzle than other facets of the football operation, it would be rather easy for things to get stale.
Winning typically prevents all of that from happening, but the traditional definitions of winning and success have been exceeded in this run that the Chiefs have been on. If your coaching staff isn't moving the needle but the team is insanely talented, a Super Bowl win can buy you some time in that regard. When a staff has a working concoction that is pairing well with a brilliantly constructed roster and a generational talent at the game's most important position, it would be much, much more practical to be averse to change and stay the course. That's exactly what the Chiefs have done, but it would appear many of the philosophies and behaviors of those who hold some of the more critical roles in innovating and motivating have run their course.
Andy Reid is a living NFL legend. He is the most successful head coach in the history of two very successful organizations. He's the fourth-winningest coach in the history of the league. He trails only Bill Belichick and Chuck Noll in Super Bowl victories. He was the right man for the job when Clark Hunt hired him in 2013, he is the right man for the job now, and he is the right man for the job moving forward. But Andy Reid has some very tough decisions to make in the coming months if he wants to continue to taste the success that the previous six seasons have provided.
Where the Chiefs’ coaching stagnation shows up most
It all starts with the offensive coaching staff and the lack of forward thinking. What the Chiefs have done for the last six years has worked. Like, really, really worked. But with over 110 games since 2019, every scenario they've been through has been put on film multiple times. The rest of the league clearly knows this, with Exhibit A proving that point being the team's current record. How have Reid, Matt Nagy, and the offensive staff not evolved or adapted in any noticeable way?
The answer is simple. They haven't. Nagy is a good coach, but he is an Andy Reid guy through and through. He is not an offensive innovator. He has no new ideas. Everything has gone flat, and it is all stale. This is evident in the Chiefs’ offensive game plans and, more so, in the players’ at-times lackluster and lackadaisical execution. And he has company in the offensive staff. Wide receivers coach Connor Embree has gotten his room progressively upgraded by GM Brett Veach, only to produce more disappointing cohesion and results year after year.
Reid's decision when it comes to the offensive coordinator and receivers coaching roles going into 2026 will be crucial not just to the team's success next season, but to an ideological shift that needs to occur for this organization to maintain dominance and reimagine its winning culture in years to come. Patrick Mahomes is squarely in his prime, and the winning window is nowhere near closed. But it's going to take some new ideas.
Perhaps those could come from someone inside the organization. Quarterbacks coach David Girardi has been dubbed an offensive whiz. He has come up in the Andy Reid offensive system, so the content matter may not change much, but there's no one saying it really needs to. Having a more imaginative mind pulling the strings in a system as dynamic as Reid's is an exciting concept as a fan and could, without question, be a refreshing one for the team. As for the wideouts, there's a guy coordinating the Chiefs’ passing game right now that I am certain could wrap his arms around that group (Joe Bleymaier), someone could easily bring some much-needed order and motivation.
Even if the answers come from the outside, they will likely have Reid's fingerprints all over them. Some may see this as an attempt to maintain some level of faux nepotism, Reid's attempt to keep “his guys” in key positions so he can maintain a certain level of control. The fact of the matter is that Andy Reid has been so successful for so long, impacting and teaching the game to so many people along the way, that there are probably more Andy Reid guys in the NFL coaching and front office circles at this point than non–Andy Reid guys.
He is the current Godfather of the NFL as far as head coaches go; he will command respect from anyone who joins his staff. Things will be done his way. What he needs is a couple of new pieces in key positions on his staff to do the same with these players. The locker room leadership is exceptional, but there are young players on this roster who need motivation and direction outside of the somewhat limited interactions they have daily with the likes of Mahomes, Kelce, and Chris Jones.
Andy Reid's system and abilities as a head coach are more than enough for the Chiefs to reestablish dominance sooner rather than later. But it cannot be deployed in the same way it has been. The most deadly mindset a successful organization can adopt is “well, we've always done it this way.” Blockbuster went out of business 15 years ago with this mindset; Netflix just bought Warner Bros. with innovative thinking. Andy Reid is not a young, progressive mind anymore. He doesn't need to be—he's built his thing and it works. But he needs to assess his leadership and make some key hires this offseason to ensure his empire continues to flourish.