Bill Belichick outlines why Chiefs can get better but also the pitfalls they may face
Was the lopsided loss to the Eagles in Super Bowl LIX a blip for the Chiefs or do they have a lot to fix ahead of the 2025 season?
Bill Belichick won six Lombardi Trophies with the Patriots but also lost three Super Bowls, so he knows about trying to rebound from a loss in the NFL’s biggest game. He believes the Chiefs can regroup and be a better team moving forward.
But Belichick also noted that the AFC West competition continues to get stronger. The Chiefs have won nine straight division titles, but the Chargers and Broncos made the postseason. The Raiders, who now have Tom Brady on the ownership group, hired former Super Bowl-champion Pete Carroll as their coach.
In the “Let’s Go” podcast, Belichick talked of the reasons for hope and concern for the Chiefs in the future. Belichick ticked off key reasons for optimism: KC has some salary cap space and their draft picks.
“Losing a Super Bowl is tough,” Belichick said. “You go so deep into the season and now you have to, without the celebration that Philadelphia has, Kansas City has to kind of regroup, get ready for the Combine, get ready for the Draft, free agency and try to restructure their team the best they can to be as competitive as they can in a division that’s suddenly gotten a lot harder. The Chargers are coming, the Broncos are coming, and I think the Raiders will be coming too now after they’ve made their most recent move and, you know, it looks like Tom’s done a good job of starting to compete in that division as well.
“But I think the big thing for Kansas City will be to figure out what they need to do, and they won’t have to deal with some of these offseason distractions they’ve had in the past. But the good thing about Kansas City is they’ve really built the team well. They have cap space, they have money, they have their draft choices, and they’ll have to use their resources to make things a little bit stronger. And I’m sure they’ll make some good decisions on that. They’ll need for them to work out better than they did at left tackle this year, let’s put it that way.”
The Chiefs selected tackle Kingsley Suamataia in the second round of the 2024 NFL Draft. Suamataia opened the season as the Chiefs’ starting left tackle. He was later replaced by Wanya Morris. The Chiefs also signed free agent D.J. Humphries, but eventually moved Joe Thuney from guard to left tackle.
Thuney struggled in Super Bowl LIX, and the Chiefs will need to find a solution at left tackle moving forward. But they’ll be drafting 31st this year. One price of consistent success is not being able to draft the top college players.
“It’s so hard for everything to fall into place every year, and for Kansas City this year, I think a good place to look is the left tackle situation,” Belichick said. “Clearly, Andy (Reid) and Brett (Veach), the general manager, identified that as a problem. And they took Kingsley in the second round ... so they addressed it, and that didn’t work out.”
Belichick added: “You go up against some teams, and you can get by with that, but until you go up against the best teams, or the best team, that was a problem for them. I think you can look at things like that, that it’s just hard for it to all work out. And when you’re drafting at the very end of the draft, like Kansas City did ... the opportunity to really upgrade at that position is hard. It’s just hard. That’s not to say you can’t do it, but it’s just hard. They identified a problem. They just couldn’t quite take care of it.”
