Chiefs need to follow their best regular season in years with their best offseason in years

The hardest part of the race is always the end, especially when you’ve worked so hard just to be within eyeshot of the finish line, and in the Chiefs’ case the last kick is even more difficult chasing down teams with better quarterbacks.

Alex Smith is a good quarterback, which gave the Chiefs’ rise from 2-14 three years ago some solid footing. But he is not a great quarterback, which means that yanking the AFC away from Tom Brady, Ben Roethlisberger and (to a lesser degree) Peyton Manning is a significant challenge.

The Chiefs, then, find themselves in a tremendously important point in their history. They are more stable than at any time since Marty Schottenheimer left, and just won their first playoff game in a generation. That’s a success, a relief, and an important thing to the Hunt family. It’s also not the goal, or enough to be satisfied if this is the peak of the current leadership group.

All of which makes the decisions of general manager John Dorsey and coach Andy Reid this offseason disproportionately pivotal if the Chiefs are to stop topping out at almost good enough.

“I think any of us who aren’t working this week are a little disappointed because we didn’t reach our ultimate goal,” Dorsey said this week, the first time he’s spoken publicly since before the season. “It’s going to make me work harder. Because until you hit that ultimate goal, it really doesn’t matter. We have a lot to be proud about, but at the end of the day, we’re going to have to move forward and understand what it takes. We’re going to have to get better again.”

The Chiefs have a real window here in the next year, probably two, and maybe three. Change always happens faster than you think in the NFL (except for the Patriots), but the age and career arcs of the Chiefs’ best players make them a fairly good bet in the short term.

Dorsey, like virtually all top-level football men, has been programmed to say as little as possible publicly, but there was a consistent message of both pride in last season’s successes and urgency to improve. Asked if the loss to New England in the divisional round was about injuries to Justin Houston and Jeremy Maclin or simply not being good enough, Dorsey said, “it could be a combination of both.”

Their best opportunity to close that gap may be this offseason. They have a long list of talented free agents — Eric Berry, Derrick Johnson, Tamba Hali, Sean Smith and Jaye Howard among them — but also more than $30 million in cap space and a strong desire from most of those players to return.

The difference between the Chiefs and the AFC’s best teams is smaller than at any point in at least a decade. They beat the Steelers (yes, without Roethlisberger) and split with the Broncos, including a blowout win in Denver.

There are people inside the Chiefs’ organization who believe they would have beaten the Broncos in the playoffs. The Patriots are better than the Chiefs, but would the outcome have been different if the Chiefs didn’t blow games early in the season? What if they were the team with the first-round bye? Then Maclin wouldn’t have been injured, and Houston could’ve rested his hyperextended knee one more week.

But none of that matters, and fine-tuning the roster and coaching philosophies to be on the same level of the AFC’s big boys will be even more difficult than turning the civic embarrassment of the Scott Pioli years back into something to be proud of.

Assuming free-agency does not include any bad surprises — Sean Smith and Howard are likely gone — the Chiefs can be specific in their work this offseason.

The defense is championship caliber, as is. There will be moving parts with Howard’s contract status (Nick Williams could be a better replacement than people think) and Hali’s health, but when at or near full strength the Chiefs’ defensive personnel is good enough for the Super Bowl.

The offense needs some help, though. Most obviously, the line made improvements as the season went on but could still use some additions. The Chiefs simplified their blocking schemes, which helped, but also limited some of what they could do.

Even more than most quarterbacks, Alex Smith’s passing is heavily dependent on whether he is pressured. His passer rating dropped from 105.5 to 64.8 and his completion percentage from 73.1 to 45.2 when under pressure, according to Pro Football Focus. Smith’s rating, completion percentage and yards per attempt with no pressure were all actually higher than Brady’s. The difference is how the men perform against pressure.

Smith needs to be better there, but the Chiefs could also help him out. Only three playoff teams gave up more frequent pressure. Smith negated some of the ill effects by running more often and more effectively than ever before, but that’s like a Band-Aid for a problem that needs stitches.

In addition to better personnel up front, the Chiefs need more playmakers on offense. This is where Dorsey’s answer to the question about the injuries could be instructive, because even assuming full health for Maclin and Jamaal Charles (who will turn 30 next season) the Chiefs need more options.

Forget the quarterbacks, just look at the other three AFC semifinalists’ skill positions: Maclin is a very good receiver, but not as effective as Rob Gronkowski, Antonio Brown or Demaryius Thomas. Those other teams also have depth in options, with Julian Edelman and Danny Amendola in New England, Martavis Bryant and Le’Veon Bell in Pittsburgh, and Emmanuel Sanders (whom the Chiefs thought they had an agreement with two years ago) in Denver.

Even if you think the Chiefs are equal or close in those positions, they are working at a disadvantage with Roethlisberger in Pittsburgh and Brady in New England. So, even at full health, the Chiefs have three proven playmakers — Maclin, Charles and Travis Kelce — but need another to spread the defense both horizontally and vertically.

Albert Wilson was given every opportunity but has shown himself to be more of a No. 3 or 4 receiver than a worthy threat opposite Maclin. Maybe Chris Conley can grow into it, but the Chiefs are close enough that they shouldn’t sit back and hope. Alshon Jeffery is the top unrestricted free-agent receiver, but may be cost-prohibitive, particularly with the Chiefs’ own free agents. But there are others expected to hit the market, too, including Jermaine Kearse and Travis Benjamin.

There are some internal improvements to make, as well. The Chiefs showed remarkable fortitude in following that rotten start with 11 straight wins. It was the franchise’s most fun season in more than a decade, and the winding path was only possible with a strong and respected coaching staff working with a talented and selfless core of leaders.

All that said, there are still some fixes here. Most obviously, the team needs an honest self-evaluation about what happened in those five straight losses, in particular the big and late leads blown at home against the Broncos and Bears.

The offensive coaches — and, forget the job titles, Andy Reid is the offensive coordinator and everyone else is his assistant — need to figure out how much they can help the line with schemes and how much they need to improve the personnel. They have been surprisingly insistent that they managed the clock right at the end of the Patriots game, but internally they have to know they should’ve been better. So while the mistakes were absolutely not why they lost, it’s still worth some self-evaluation.

Most of the early-season questions should be for the defensive coaches. They gave up 135 points and 1,192 yards in consecutive losses to the Broncos, Packers and Bengals. Some of that can be explained in personnel — Berry, Derrick Johnson and Dontari Poe getting their strength back, and Sean Smith’s suspension — but not all of it.

Also, the Chiefs need to learn from the playoff loss. At least on the surface, the Chiefs were well-equipped to be tougher on the Patriots’ quick passes. The Chiefs pride themselves on physical coverage that disrupts timing and creates opportunities for the pass rush, but that was virtually nonexistent against New England. The Patriots are a great team, but the Chiefs could’ve done better there.

The Chiefs are in a better place than at any point in their recent history. They have strong leadership, talented players and have demonstrated both an ability and a love for working with each other. They have three winning seasons in a row for the first time since the 1990s.

They have also presented themselves as mostly unimpressed with their progress. They want more than an escape from their recent struggles. That’s a good thing, obviously. A particularly large chunk of their ability to do that will be decided by whether they can make these specific and critical improvements now. They need to follow their best regular season in years with a corresponding offseason.

This story was originally published January 22, 2016 at 1:56 PM with the headline "Chiefs need to follow their best regular season in years with their best offseason in years."