The Chiefs are breaking camp on Wednesday at Missouri Western State and head coach Andy Reid shared some plans for preseason playing time on Friday in Seattle.
Via multiple reporters, Reid said in his press conference that there’s a “good chance” quarterback Patrick Mahomes will not play in the game. Other starters are likely to rest as well.
This is a bit of a change for Reid, who usually gives starters plenty of playing time in the team’s penultimate preseason game.
Mahomes was on the field for just three snaps in last week’s preseason opener, tossing a 1-yard touchdown pass to receiver Jason Brownlee.
For his part, Mahomes noted that he has no problem playing in the final exhibition contest against the Bears in the final preseason contest.
“I always want to play and be out there,” Mahomes said, via Nate Taylor of ESPN. “I trust in coach Reid and his process fully.”
Chiefs tight end Travis Kelce has become one of the all-time greats at his position. He’s a walk-in Hall of Famer. He and Jason will inevitably join the Sharpes as the only brothers in Canton.
That doesn’t keep Travis from acknowledging that he can do things even better.
In a new GQ profile, Kelce makes an admission to Sean Manning regarding his focus and preparation on football.
“I think it might have slipped a little bit because I did have a little bit more focus in trying to set myself up,” Kelce said. “And opportunities came up where I was excited to venture into a new world of acting and being an entertainer. I don’t say this as ‘I shouldn’t have done it.’ I’m just saying that my work ethic is such that I have so much pride in how I do things that I never want the product to tail off, and I feel like these past two years haven’t been to my standard. I just have such a motivation to show up this year for my guys.”
And the motivation for 2025 is clear: “Win a Super Bowl is the only goal. It’s the only goal. It’s every goal.”
He still had 93 catches in 2023 and 97 in 2024. However, after seven straight 1,000-yard seasons, he fell short of the mark each year. And the eight total touchdowns in two seasons combined fall short of the single-season production in 2022 (12), 2021 (nine), and 2020 (11).
While the word “retire” or “retirement” doesn’t appear anywhere in the lengthy article, it continues to feel likely that Kelce would have walked away if the Chiefs had completed the first ever Super Bowl three-peat. Given the way he discussed his future in the aftermath of the game, it felt like he still could.
Now, he seems to be fully focused and all in for what would be a fourth Super Bowl title before moving on to a next phase, which is already more lucrative than his playing career.
The Chiefs went to the Super Bowl for the fifth time in the last six years last season, but that hasn’t stopped people from wondering if the team will take a step back this season.
A blowout loss to the Eagles in New Orleans capped a year that saw the Chiefs squeeze past opponents for 12 one-score wins in the regular season and playoffs. Another year of wear and tear on bodies and a few bounces the other way are often cited as reasons to think that someone else will rise to the top of the AFC, which is a point of view that Chiefs head coach Andy Reid can comprehend but it isn’t one he thinks is particularly relevant to his team.
“You understand because there were so many close games,” Reid said on Up & Adams. “But that’s the National Football League, so I was proud of the guys and how they handled those. When it’s all said and done, it’s winning the game. We have winners, and they figured it out. I was proud of them for that. We don’t listen to all the noise. If you do that, you’re going to go crazy. . . . I don’t care about the noise. Let’s go win the game.”
The Chiefs addressed a major shortcoming from their loss to the Eagles by taking tackle Josh Simmons in the first round and their championship mettle is something other teams won’t be able to lean on when things go sideways during the season. Those are reasons to doubt the doubters, but the final accounting will take place over the coming months.
Tom Brady is a minority owner of the Raiders, but it’s the quarterback of the AFC West rival Chiefs he most respects in the NFL today.
Asked on the Joel Klatt Show if there are any quarterbacks he respects for how they go about their business or remind him of himself, Brady named only Mahomes as he gave a long answer about everything a quarterback has to do to win.
“It’s always that line about who wants to win versus who’s willing to do whatever it takes to win,” Brady said. “Everyone wants to win, but what are the habits and the daily habits and the actionable things you need to do every day to put your team in a position to win? So Patrick Mahomes, to me, is the one that does that the most often because who he is, obviously his physical talent, how he understands what he needs to do offensively, and he brings a consistent winning attitude to work every single day. In the biggest moments you can depend on him the most. That’s clear.”
Brady didn’t mention any other active quarterbacks by name but indicated that the other top quarterbacks in the league still have more to prove before they’re on Mahomes’ level.
“There’s other guys that are still developing, and they need to prove it before, in my mind, I can say, ‘Oh yeah, he’s done it.’ Well, obviously, he hasn’t done it yet,” Brady said. “They’ve all shown flashes of amazing things. They’re all great players. All of them can make tremendous plays. At some point, they need to take the next step and take, in my mind, more ownership of what they’re doing, in terms of the organizational level, to do more things to empower more people, to get more people on that train or that bus with you to head in the direction you want to go.”
Brady said he isn’t sure if the current crop of quarterbacks outside Mahomes are doing every single thing they need to do to be the leaders of a franchise.
“The quarterback, in many ways, is the CEO of the team,” Brady said. “Certainly on game day, there’s nobody that impacts the game more than the quarterback in NFL football. Now, you have to have the ability and the belief from the entire team, offensively and defensively, that your word means so much. And how you act every day matters to all three phases of the game. As a quarterback you don’t just punch the clock, ‘I did my job, I threw for 40 touchdowns, why are we not winning?’ What are you doing in the offseason to help your defense? What are you doing to push the personnel department, to get people doing the right thing. Are you involved in game planning? I used to do game plans. I used to walk in and say, ‘Here’s the things we’re doing.’ I used to do my own walk-throughs. I used to say, ‘Alright, guys, I don’t give a fuck if the coaches want to come, we’re doing our walk-through.’”
Brady reached 10 Super Bowls and won seven of them, the best in NFL history. Mahomes has been to five Super Bowls and won three. Time will tell if Mahomes is ever going to supplant Brady as the greatest quarterback in NFL history, but Brady thinks Mahomes is doing the right things to get there — even as the team Brady co-owns tries to prevent that from happening.
Chiefs head coach Andy Reid shared some negative injury updates during his Monday press conference and two players had their seasons come to an end a short time later.
Defensive end Janarius Robinson and safety Deon Bush were placed on injured reserve. Robinson fractured his foot and Bush tore his Achilles.
Robinson signed with the Chiefs this offseason after having 13 tackles and 1.5 sacks in 16 games for the Raiders over the last two seasons. He had a sack in the preseason opener against the Cardinals on Saturday.
Bush was injured in the game against Arizona. He appeared in 24 games for the Chiefs over the last three seasons.
The Chiefs also announced that they have signed defensive end Nate Matlack. Matlack had five sacks at Pitt last year and went undrafted in April.
