One thing Patrick Mahomes can’t do on a football field is enable his star teammates to reverse the effects of aging and heavy workloads.
That’s a big reason why I see the Chiefs and their NFL-best quarterback falling short of the team’s 11½-victory total on betting lines.
Eleven wins is my pick for the ‘25 Chiefs, a forecast that’s more contrarian than you might expect. Consider the club’s regular-season win-loss totals with Mahomes as the quarterback: 12, 12, 14, 12, 14, 11 and 15 last year.
Contributing to the four-win tumble will be an oddity: the price of an AFC dynasty.
For all the rewards of reaching five of the past six Super Bowls, the Chiefs also put a staggering number of postseason snaps on star players who are now in their 30s.
The question is, how long can Travis Kelce and Chris Jones, the team’s best players other than Mahomes, sustain top-tier explosiveness?
Consider that Kelce’s career total of snaps in the postseason (1,451) equates to about 25 intense games and more than doubles the total of the next active tight end on the list, 49ers star George Kittle (697).
Also, Kelce leads active tight ends in career regular-season snaps — by a lot.
Runner-up Zach Ertz, now with the Commanders, is more than 1,200 snaps behind him. Think of that as 20 additional games.
Kelce, who’ll be 36 in October, had a miserable Super Bowl performance four months ago. His overall year was very good, but Pro Football Focus reported declines in yards per route run and yards after the catch.
Though the heady Mahomes-Kelce connection will remain lethal in the red zone, Reid will need to find other playmakers to lighten the seven-time All-Pro’s in-season load. Having far more mileage on the odometer than any other active tight end looms as a big test for the 6-foot-5, 250-pounder.
Jones this year should challenge for his seventh All-Pro season. He’ll likely also feel K.C.’s annual pushes for the Super Bowl trophy, which have put an NFL-high positional total of postseason snaps on his 6-foot-6, 310-pound body.
Jones’ 1,042 career snaps in the playoffs exceed by 500 snaps the total of the 49ers Nick Bosa, the runner-up among active defensive linemen.
The 10th-year pro’s regular-season snap load leads all active defensive linemen aged 30 and under, as Jones nears his 31st birthday next month.
Improvement among the Chiefs’ AFC West rivals, a clumsy bunch in most recent years, will add to K.C. strain and argues against Reid’s club matching its 5-1 intradivisonal record of last year (the only loss was a meaningless blowout at Denver, after K.C. locked up the No. 1 seed).
The West trio’s head coach-QB combinations — Jim Harbaugh and Justin Herbert (Chargers), Sean Payton and Bo Nix (Broncos) and Pete Carroll and Geno Smith (Raiders) — are the best each of those franchises have leaned upon in a long time, although Reid and Mahomes got the better of Harbaugh and Herbert twice last year in their first season together.
So look for the Chiefs to split their six AFC West games. And expect three other defeats amid a 17-game journey that pairs them against the Eagles, the Ravens, the Bills, the Commanders, Lions and Texans.
There’s an overarching theme to consider, too.
The 2024 Chiefs went 11-0 in one-score games. Regression there is as much of a sure thing as Kansas City eateries serving up delicious barbecue next season.
This isn’t an obituary to the Chiefs’ AFC dynasty. After all, off their 11-6 season two years ago, Mahomes and friends won playoff games at Buffalo and Baltimore, then beat the 49ers in the Super Bowl.
