Kansas City Has Been Boring Us Into Forgetting It's Kansas City

There was a point when drafting Patrick Mahomes required a small luxury tax.

You wanted Mahomes? Fine. Pay up.

You wanted Travis Kelce? Also pay up.

You wanted whichever Chiefs receiver we had collectively convinced ourselves was about to become Tyreek Hill? Please proceed directly to the expensive part of the draft.

Then 2025 happened.

Kansas City went 6-11, missed the playoffs for the first time since 2014 and scored only 21.3 points per game, 20th in the NFL. The team that spent years making every red-zone possession feel like an Amazon package marked out for delivery suddenly became extremely capable of leaving fantasy managers staring through the blinds.

And fantasy managers have responded.

The market now prices Kansas City as only the 23rd-most valuable fantasy roster.

The AutoDraftYears model has it 5th.

That is an 18-place gap, more than double the eight-place bar where the model stops calling a disagreement noise. Only New Orleans is discounted more steeply. Kansas City isn't merely cheap.

So the question isn't whether the Chiefs declined.

They absolutely did.

It's whether everyone finally gave up at exactly the moment Kansas City became interesting again.

2025 was bad. It was also weird.

Kansas City's offense has been trending down for years.

That is a five-year scoring slope of -2.2 points per season.

So no, fantasy managers did not hallucinate the decline because Xavier Worthy ruined a parlay.

The Chiefs really did become less explosive.

But 2025 also had the feeling of several overdue bills arriving on the same afternoon.

Kansas City finished 6-11 despite scoring 34 more points than it allowed. Pro Football Reference's expected record based on point differential was 9.5-7.5. By Week 15, the Chiefs had lost seven one-score games, five by three points or fewer. One year earlier, they had won 11 one-score games. Football regression apparently keeps receipts.

The passing game never really got the clean runway everyone imagined, either.

Rashee Rice began the season serving a six-game suspension. Xavier Worthy injured his shoulder on the third offensive snap of Week 1. Kansas City opened that game with three straight punts and 35 total yards before Mahomes began dragging the offense back into it.

Mahomes eventually finished 14 starts with 3,587 passing yards, 22 passing touchdowns and 11 interceptions, while adding 422 yards and five scores on the ground. Then the season ended in the most literal possible way: he tore the ACL and LCL in his left knee late in the Week 15 loss to the Chargers, the same game that officially eliminated Kansas City from the playoffs.

This matters because there are two ways to interpret 2025.

One is simple: the Chiefs got old, slow and ordinary.

The other is slightly more complicated: an offense already declining from an absurd peak also dealt with receiver absences, close-game regression and eventually a catastrophic quarterback injury.

The AutoDraftYears model is much closer to the second explanation.

The model thinks 2025 was the bottom

Kansas City projects for 26.3 points per game in 2026.

That is a five-point jump from last season and would rank 6th in the NFL.

The model also expects the pass rate to rise from 57.6% to 60.6%, with offensive volume climbing to roughly 61 snaps per game and red-zone trips increasing from 3.5 to 3.9.

And there are actual football reasons to entertain the rebound.

Kansas City signed Kenneth Walker in March. Eric Bieniemy returned as offensive coordinator after previously holding the job during Kansas City's 2018-22 offensive run. Most importantly, Mahomes and Rice were both fully cleared for training camp in July following their knee injuries.

That does not make Mahomes' knee irrelevant. Being medically cleared in July and looking exactly like Patrick Mahomes in September are different things.

But the rebound thesis no longer requires us to whisper assuming Mahomes has legs before every sentence.

The model grades Kansas City's 2026 fantasy environments:

• QB: 3rd
• RB: 14th
• WR: 2nd
• TE: 2nd

The interesting part is obvious.

This is primarily a bet on the passing game.

History says this offense should support more fantasy players

I wanted something stronger than Andy Reid will probably figure it out because he usually does.

So the model searched 320 team-seasons from 2016-2025 for the 30 offenses most similar to Kansas City's projected scoring, passing rate, volume and red-zone opportunity.

Those teams produced:

The average comparable offense created 3.7 fantasy starters.

The average offense in the full sample created 2.6.

That is the disagreement.

The market sees a roster fantasy managers are tired of.

The model sees an offense capable of feeding three or four useful players.

And that brings us to the actual point of this entire exercise: who should we draft?

Xavier Worthy is the bet I want

Here is the current board:

Market and Model are ranks within the position. Edge is the model's position rank against the market's, after removing the drift that affects every player at that price — so it reads as “the model likes him this many places more than it likes the typical player who costs this much.” A call needs the edge to clear the position's bar (QB 5, RB 15, WR 11, TE 5 places), set at two-thirds of that position's own spread.

Worthy is where things get strange.

The market has him at WR52, around pick 124.

The model has him WR23.

Even after adjusting for the fact that rankings naturally become less reliable this deep into drafts, Worthy's edge remains +25 positional spots.

And I like why the model disagrees.

You aren't paying for a receiver to rescue a bad offense. You are paying WR52 prices for a player inside the model's No. 2 receiver environment.

There is a difference.

Worthy still has to become a better and more consistent NFL receiver. The model, despite repeated requests from management, cannot make him beat press coverage.

But at pick 124?

That is the sort of uncertainty I want to own.

Low acquisition cost. Low risk grade. Excellent team environment. Large model-market disagreement.

We spend half of draft season complaining that sleepers no longer exist.

Well. Sometimes they exist. They're just players who disappointed us first.

Mahomes might be the more ridiculous value

Patrick Mahomes is currently QB12 around pick 102.

The model ranks him QB2.

Patrick Mahomes becoming a post-hype sleeper feels like Tom Hanks joining community theater, but here we are.

The knee is the reason I wouldn't blindly treat QB2 as destiny. ACL/LCL surgery in December is not a footnote.

But the price changes the question.

You do not need MVP Mahomes.

At QB12, you need a healthy Mahomes inside a passing offense that becomes substantially better than it was in 2025.

The model believes that happens.

I would rather make that bet at QB12 than pay for someone else's best-case scenario four rounds earlier.

I wouldn't turn this into a Chiefs-themed draft

This is where team analysis can become dangerous.

Kansas City is one of the two most underpriced rosters in the league, therefore draft everyone wearing red.

No.

Rashee Rice is WR5 in the model versus WR11 in the market, but the adjusted edge isn't large enough to trigger a buy.

Kenneth Walker is RB11 versus RB13.

Fair.

Kelce is TE6 versus TE12, but again, the discount isn't large enough for the model to pound the table.

The actionable disagreement is concentrated in Mahomes and Worthy.

That's useful. A cheap roster and a cheap player are not the same product. We do not need to purchase the entire Costco just because the rotisserie chicken is underpriced.

What I want to see in September

Watch red-zone trips.

Kansas City managed 3.5 per game last season.

The model projects 3.9.

If the Chiefs are consistently approaching four red-zone trips per game in September, the larger rebound thesis is probably working. More scoring opportunities means more room for Mahomes, Worthy, Rice, Kelce and Walker to coexist without fantasy managers needing to conduct weekly touchdown diplomacy.

Because this isn't really a bet that the 2022 Chiefs are coming back.

That version may be gone.

It's a bet that fantasy managers watched three years of declining offense, a 6-11 season and Mahomes leaving the field with a torn knee ligament and finally said:

Fine. I'm done.

The model thinks they picked an interesting time to leave.

For once, Patrick Mahomes and the Chiefs are sitting in the clearance aisle.

I'm at least checking the sticker.

Sources: Auto Draft Years FF Model workbook — Team Data By Year, Team Stat Ranking, 2026 Team Context; Auto Draft Years 2026 consensus board (16 authoritative market sources); Player outcomes 2016–2025, Pro Football Reference via the project dataset. Team environment grades, forecasts and player model ranks are proprietary. Every figure on this page is generated from the dataset at build time; none is typed in by hand.