The Athletic Football Show previews the 2026 Kansas City Chiefs

“The Athletic Football Show” is previewing all 32 teams leading up to the start of the 2026 NFL season. Below are select quotes from the show’s preview of the Kansas City Chiefs. The quotes are edited for clarity. You can watch the whole preview on YouTube and in the embedded video below, or listen to the full AFC West preview wherever you get your podcasts.

Derrik Klassen on what about the Chiefs most excites him: This is a team that for years has not had an explosive runner and really has struggled to gain explosive plays, and they just signed Kenneth Walker to a huge deal, and that’s kind of his whole deal.

I think sometimes it’s hard to figure out exactly how much a running back’s value is going to cascade to the rest of the team. In the case of the Kansas City Chiefs where they were so historically bad at generating these field-flipping runs, bringing in a player like Kenneth Walker, where he obviously gives that to you, it’s pretty easy to see how that actually adds something to this offense. I do think that that gets them back to the formula that was working for them in 2019 and 2020, where they were more explosive on offense. I just really believe in what Ken Walker is going to do here.

Robert Mays on what he’ll be watching the first month of the season: I’m interested in the structure of the offense, because this is a team that was incredibly siloed. Beyond the changes of what running the ball under center could do for their explosiveness, I just think having more optionality and murkiness about what you’re doing situationally is huge.

A lot of teams in the NFL have done this. They’ve gone back to an under-center world in part because you’re giving away no information by doing that, while making things easier on the line and on the quarterback. The Chiefs last year were one of the most siloed teams in the NFL. Per TruMedia, 19.3 percent play-action rate from under center last year, which was 31st in the NFL. They ran the ball 80 percent of the time when they were under center last season. That’s not going to happen again because of the running back, and because they know there are benefits waiting for them if they diversify that a little bit.

Dave Helman on what’s keeping him up at night: What if Kenneth Walker’s presence in the offense isn’t enough to change the fact that this could be a bottom-five receiver corps? What if Rashee Rice has lost a step for various reasons, be they injury or incarceration related? Xavier Worthy weighs 165 pounds and dealt with injury last year. We joked about it several times this summer — and I hope Cyrus Allen is awesome — but if a fifth-round pick is the talk of camp and there’s a genuine panic when he suffers a practice injury, that’s not a good sign if you’re supposed to contend for meaningful things.

I went through the teams and I was like, ‘Who do I think definitively has a worse receiver corps than the Chiefs?’ And I came up with Miami and Vegas. This could be a really, really bad unit, and I don’t know if Kenneth Walker alone can fix that.

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