The Kansas City Chiefs are the No. 3 seed in the AFC playoffs, but most of the talk surrounding the conference has centered on the top-seed Baltimore Ravens and the red-hot Buffalo Bills as the top contenders. The main reason Kansas City doesn’t enter that conversation is the team’s awful receiving corps. “They still have Patrick Mahomes, so they are dangerous, but they are not playing on time like they have in the past, and Mahomes does not trust who he is throwing to,” an executive told Mike Sando of The Athletic.
It’s hard to blame him. The Chiefs led football with 40 dropped passes this season. The team’s receivers contributed 26 of those drops, while superstar Travis Kelce dropped seven passes himself. Given that he was targeted 121 times, however, his drop rate was understandable and acceptable.
It’s much harder to justify Kadarius Toney’s season after he was only targeted 38 times but still managed to drop five passes (and was clearly offsides on what could have potentially been a game-winning touchdown against the Buffalo Bills in an eventual loss).
Or Marquez Valdes-Scantling, who dropped a wide-open, go-ahead touchdown pass against the Philadelphia Eagles in another Chiefs loss. The Chiefs don’t have a single trustworthy playmaker at wideout. Only Rashee Rice has shown some level of trustworthiness, catching 79 passes for 938 yards and seven touchdowns. But he’s hardly an elite option, and Kansas City’s issues at the position seem destined to haunt them come the playoffs.
