The Kansas City Chiefs’ decision to trade Tyreek Hill to the Miami Dolphins sent shock waves across the NFL. Now, as there has been much outside talk that the Chiefs offense will see a notable downturn in production in the 2022 season, Patrick Mahomes is still confident in what the unit can produce.
“We’re going to have a great offense, I’m sure, by the end of the year,” Mahomes told Sports Illustrated’s Albert Breer.
Mahomes will now rely upon Mecole Hardman, JuJu Smith-Schuster and Marquez Valdes-Scantling to be his top three wideout options. Out of this trio, Smith-Schuster is the only receiver with any significant experience in being a No. 1 option. Following Antonio Brown’s departure from the Pittsburgh Steelers, Ben Roethlisberger often called on him a hefty amount of times in crucial games, although the versatile wideout did not finish any of his final three seasons in Pittsburgh ranking at first in receiving yards within the team.
In the big picture, Mahomes is much curious as to how defensive coordinators will now game plan against Kansas City's offense. Opposing defensive backs always had to keep an eye on Hill due to his ability to get open downfield, but this will not be the case with the Chiefs anymore.
“I’m very interested, honestly, because obviously we got a lot more two-high shell zone coverages this last year and for a while it had a lot of success against us,” Mahomes said. “So do defenses go back to the coverages they were playing against us before, because we don’t have Tyreek, who’s such a dynamic playmaker? Or do they try to evolve in the defense they were playing last year, because they were having some success early in the season?
“I’m interested to see. I’ll try to prepare for it all. But that’s what’s great about the NFL; it’s just always changing, it’s always evolving and you have to continue to get better and better or you get lost behind everyone else.”
Several defenses were quite creative in game planning against Mahomes last season. For one, the Buffalo Bills played Cover-2 (zone) on 56 percent of Mahomes’ pass attempts in their Week 5 victory over the Chiefs. But as Mahomes touched, he sure will aim to prepare for whatever defenses will throw at him next season.