Evaluating the Chiefs’ wide receivers, a group that could encounter change in 2020
The top two receivers on the Chiefs’ depth chart missed multiple weeks, and even when healthy, Tyreek Hill was less productive on a per-game basis than the year before. The third option, Mecole Hardman, was a rookie who had played the position only a few years.
And yet the Chiefs still led the AFC in receiving yards.
Sure, the tight end is as good as any in football. The running backs contributed. But the receivers more than held their own on a Super Bowl team.
Here’s their positional review and what might await the group in 2020.
2019 FINAL ROSTER: Tyreek Hill, Demarcus Robinson, Byron Pringle, Sammy Watkins, Mecole Hardman
INJURED RESERVE: Marcus Kemp
2020 FREE AGENTS: Demarcus Robinson
Position review
In the first quarter of the season opener, the Chiefs’ receiving corps took on a drastically different look. Tyreek Hill left the game in Jacksonville because of a shoulder injury that would sideline him a month.
Ho, hum. Sammy Watkins went for a career-best 198 yards and three touchdowns in that win. One game later, Demarcus Robinson totaled 172 yards and two touchdowns in a victory in Oakland. Three weeks later, Byron Pringle had 103 yards and a touchdown.
The Chiefs’ wide receivers did encounter some difficulty against man-to-man defenses over the middle of the season — and saw plenty of it as a result — but Hill’s return provided a solution. One of the toughest receivers in football to defend one-on-one, Hill didn’t miss a beat upon his return. He scored seven touchdowns in the final 11 games, including five in his initial five games back from the shoulder injury.
Over the final 15 games, Watkins never matched what he did that opening weekend. In fact, he never scored another touchdown.
Well, until the postseason.
Watkins had 76 yards in the Divisional Round; he caught 7 passes for 114 yards and a touchdown that all but sealed the AFC Championship Game; and he had 98 yards and a key catch late in the Super Bowl win, beating 49ers top cornerback Richard Sherman off the line.
Hardman flashed the talent that triggered the Chiefs to use last year’s 56th overall draft pick on him, a weapon in both the return game and as a wideout. His return against the Texans jumpstarted the comeback in the AFC Divisional Round. But he lacked consistency down the stretch in the offensive role. In his last eight games, including the playoffs, Hardman had just seven catches for 117 yards combined.
Looking ahead
On the offensive side of the football, the wide receivers room could embrace more change than any other.
Hill, the man planted atop the depth chart, will be back. The Chiefs will look for a step forward from Hardman in his second year.
But uncertainty trickles down from there, which could prompt the front office to explore the draft class for talent. They’ve shown a propensity for doing that in the Reid era. The Chiefs have used five top-five round picks on receivers in the past five years.
On the chopping block?
Given their proximity to the salary cap limit — they’re projected to have just $13.7 million in space, per Over the Cap — the Chiefs will have to look to some expensive contracts from which they’re able to break free. At the top of that list resides Watkins.
He will count $21 million toward the cap next season, second most on the entire roster. The Chiefs can cut him before June and save $14 million against the cap.
Robinson, a free agent, is likely to attract both outside suitors and more annual money than the four-year, $2.9 million contract he just completed.