With the weight of last year’s disappointment and the franchise’s Super Bowl history on their shoulders, the Chiefs face a tough challenge getting back into Super Bowl contention with their current roster. One highly respected NFL analyst believes this team no longer deserves to be viewed as an automatic contender. Longtime Pro Football Focus lead analyst and Check the Mic co-host Sam Monson was straightforward in breaking down what the Chiefs really look like heading into the season.

“It’s on paper, I think the worst roster they’ve had, and last year reset the worst case scenario,” Monson said on the show, via Starcade Media. “Up until last year, I would’ve said Andy Reid plus Patrick Mahomes equals 9 or 10 wins and a playoff appearance. Last year showed that’s not true at all. Andy Reid plus Patrick Mahomes can equal 6 wins.”

This is not a random hot take either. Kansas City went 6-11 last season and missed the playoffs for the first time in Mahomes’ entire career as a starter. They have appeared in seven Super Bowls in franchise history, winning four and losing three. Last year snapped a 10-year playoff streak.

The offense was especially inconsistent, with Mahomes admitting that mistakes kept piling up at important moments. He threw for 3,587 yards and 22 touchdowns in 14 games, but also had 11 interceptions, including five in the red zone. Kansas City showed flashes of its old form at times, but the offense could not maintain that level from week to week or even throughout full games.

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“I think offensively we weren’t consistent enough throughout games. We had stretches in games where we played good; we had stretches in the season where we played really good. We’ve got to be better, and that starts with me, and then it kind of has to feed throughout the entire offense,” Mahomes said at a press conference in January.

“I think just compounding mistakes. You make mistakes throughout a game. For myself, I look at some of the red-zone interceptions I threw in kind of bigger moments in the third and fourth quarter of games.”

Opposing defenses also became better at taking away the plays the Chiefs had relied on for years, forcing Kansas City to adjust and find new ways to create explosive plays. Mahomes’ season-ending ACL and LCL injury in Week 15 made the situation even worse, but he made it clear that the team’s problems had started well before the injury. That disappointing season is a big reason Sam Monson believes the 2026 roster should not automatically be viewed as a Super Bowl contender simply because Mahomes and Andy Reid are still there. But.

Monson says the Chiefs look weaker on paper, but that does not mean they will actually play poorly. It’s because Monson found two things.

• First, Check the Mic liked Kansas City’s defensive rookie class, led by first-round picks Mansoor Delane from LSU and Peter Woods from Clemson.

• The second, and Monson’s biggest reliance for Kansas City, is running back Kenneth Walker III. “If the Chiefs are right about Kenneth Walker, if he does transform the entire offense, then everything’s different,” Monson said.

Walker, the MVP of Super Bowl LX with the Seattle Seahawks, came to Kansas City this offseason, and his 2025 tape makes it obvious why Monson picked him out. He ran the ball 221 times for 1,027 yards and five touchdowns. Forced 61 missed tackles doing it. PFF graded him at 88.4 overall, second-best among every qualified running back in the league that year.

Why Kansas City’s Offensive Identity Hinges So Heavily on One Addition

The rushing problem in Kansas City is not new, and it is not Monson’s invention. Running back Kareem Hunt ran for 1,327 yards in 2017, and has hit 1,000 yards since. Mahomes was not even the starter yet when that last happened. Multiple Super Bowls and multiple offensive coordinators later, that drought is still going.

Walker’s arrival hits different because of that history. A genuine run game means Mahomes does not have to throw his way out of every situation every single week. That is something Kansas City has genuinely not had in years. If last season was a fluke, fixing the run game is the most direct path back.

The regular season will settle whether Monson got this right. But the question he raised is real. Either the new pieces actually move the needle, or last year was not the fluke everyone in Kansas City is hoping it was.