There’s one bonus of the Tyreek Hill trade for KC Chiefs that we’ve yet to talk about
At some point over the past two months, Chiefs coaches gathered in front of TV screens throughout the facility and re-watched every play from last season. The exercise supplied the foundation for scheme evaluations — a combination of a look backward and then a look ahead.
And wouldn’t you know it, as they were working toward completion, the evaluations required some revisions — because the roster itself had been revised in a way too significant to ignore. The Chiefs last month sent wide receiver Tyreek Hill to Miami for five picks that will encompass the next two NFL Drafts.
That trade will tinker with the Chiefs’ future scheme, and of course their personnel.
And you know what?
Good.
The Chiefs needed to tweak something. While that might seem like nitpicking considering they were still a top-5 offense in 2021, this is about how to stay a top-5 offense, or better yet return to the team that led the league in yards in 2020 or led the league in both yards and points in 2018.
As the Chiefs migrated through free agency and preparations for the NFL Draft, nothing would be more beneficial than a serious look inward. That’s required now. It’s not about whether to change; it’s about how to best change.
The opposition felt as though they figured something out with the Chiefs’ offense a year ago. None of them said that out loud, but they didn’t need to. The film said it. Their game plans said it. The two-deep shells said it.
The offense struggled at times last year, at one point producing just 36 points in a three-game stretch.
Did the Chiefs need an overhaul? No.
A change? Absolutely.
The trade forced one — well, more than one actually. It obviously prompts new personnel, but that, in effect, also alters the scheme. Even if slightly.
No player is like Tyreek Hill. At age 28, for now, he still shifts into an extra gear. But the Chiefs became too dependent on that skill.
In the aftermath, they aren’t short on speed — they still have Mecole Hardman, and they added Marquez Valdes-Scantling through free agency.
Now they have more than speed.
They have size.
They have a wide receiver whose strength is running the underneath, over-the-middle routes in JuJu Smith-Schuster, another signing. They’ve long needed to provide quarterback Patrick Mahomes a receiver who can just go get it. And he thinks he has found a couple.
This month, Mahomes has invited the receivers to train with him in Fort Worth. His biggest takeaway? The difference in size. He thought he overthrew a pass or two only to watch a receiver just go get it.
That quality could do something that Hill alone could not.
Bust up the two-deep shell.
“I’m very interested to see how defenses are going to play us in general,” Mahomes said Monday. “A lot of that shell stuff was because of the speed that we had on the outside. This year, we have that speed still ... but we have bigger guys that can catch over the middle. ... So we kind of have a nice mixture of speed and size, which I think will force defenses to not only play those deep coverages but come up and play some man, too.”
Mahomes’ spoke with an obvious excitement — if manufactured, well, it fooled me. The Chiefs kept him abreast of the Hill trade conversations before they reached a conclusion, as though they’d have to break the news to him delicately. Speaking on a Zoom call Monday, Mahomes didn’t look like a quarterback in grief.
The Chiefs will miss Hill — let’s not mistake that — but they have the opportunity to keep defenses guessing again, and heading into the offseason, that should have been their top priority. Become less predictable. A new wide receiver room — one that looks this drastically differently — offers that opportunity, if nothing else.
It’s hard to argue it’s a more talented room absent Hill. It’s not. But it’s a more diverse group. Hardman no longer overlaps with the team’s No. 1 option. Smith-Schuster and Valdes-Scantling are vastly different receivers. By the way, Travis Kelce is still the key part of the mix. And the Chiefs could — and still should — look to spend at least one draft pick on a receiver.
That variety will return the element of surprise back to Andy Reid and Patrick Mahomes.
There’s actual evidence in its outcome.
Mahomes had good numbers in the four games without Hill in 2019 — he threw eight touchdowns and zero interceptions, compiling a 108.9 passer rating. But let’s look instead at the Steelers game just last season. Hill, coming back from COVID-19, spent the game largely as a decoy and was targeted only twice, playing fewer than half the offensive snaps.
For once, the passing game didn’t go through Hill, who broke a franchise record with 111 catches.
It went through No. 15. And he responded with one of his best games ... without his best weapon. Nine different players caught at least one pass. The Steelers’ defense appeared lost.
The Chiefs lose a unique player in Hill.
But that’s what they gain — the chance to fool some teams again.
“I think we’re going to have a different variety for them where they won’t know exactly where the ball is going every single play,” Mahomes said. “They won’t know (whom) it’s going to because we have so many different guys that can make plays in this offense.”