Are We a Running Team Now?

The latest newsletter from KCSN Sports Data Scientist, Joseph Hefner

The Kansas City Chiefs just won their fourth straight game to open the 2024 season, over division rival Los Angeles Chargers. It was a bit of a pyrrhic victory, as our star WR Rashee Rice was injured in the game while trying to tackle a defender returning an interception. As of the time of this writing, we do not yet know the severity of the injury, but at the very least, he will be out for an extended period of time.

Without Rashee Rice, it is reasonable to ask how we are going to be able to sustain an offense. Xavier Worthy is a first round pick, but is still a rookie. He will certainly be leaned on more than we expected at the beginning of the season, when both Hollywood Brown and Rashee Rice were ahead of him on the depth chart. Now, he will be splitting reps with Justin Watson as our WR1.

While the question of who will be the one to step up in the WR room is an open question (or if we will trade for a top WR such as Amari Cooper or Diontae Johnson), I’d like to look at some metrics that have surprised me for most of this year.

This graphic shows the pass rate for every season in the Mahomes era. You can see that the Chiefs have been a very pass-happy team for all of Mahomes time in Kansas City. 2018 somehow, that high-flying 5,000 yards, 50 touchdown season, was somehow the lowest pass rate we’d seen from Mahomes, at 66.2%. Every other year, we’ve been between 67% and 69%. It’s been incredibly consistent the entire time Mahomes has been our starting quarterback.