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The NFL Wants You to Watch the Kansas City Chiefs | The Ringer

We’re approaching an interesting nexus for the 2025 season. Kansas City’s visibility will be as high as any dynasty in American sports history, at a time when the Chiefs are a more boring football product than they’ve ever been in the Mahomes era. Even if your favorite team has been a footnote in the Chiefs’ dynasty-building over the last half decade, or if you believe they get all the calls, or if you’re tired of pregame photos of Taylor Swift in the Arrowhead Stadium tunnel, the reason so many seem to have grown tired of the Chiefs’ schtick is because they’re overexposed. And that’s about to get amplified in 2025, despite the on-field product getting worse in recent years.

The sexy, explosive style of offense from the early years of Mahomes’s career is long gone, and in recent years, they simply haven’t been all that fun to watch. They seemingly only play close, weird games—they won 11 games by eight points or less last season—and rather than reveling in their grittiness or greatness, we’re more often left wondering how they keep getting away with it. The Chiefs finished the 2024 regular season tied for the league’s best record, but were just eighth in offensive DVOA and 12th in defensive DVOA. The Chiefs’ passing game was particularly bad when the offensive line allowed pressure (which was often), and they also had one of the league’s most disappointing rushing attacks.

2025 NFL schedule release: Win-loss predictions, analysis for every team | FOX Sports

Kansas City Chiefs

Carmen Vitali: Well, the Chiefs went 15-2 last year despite question marks at offensive tackle and injured skill players. Sure, they lost the Super Bowl, but they got there didn’t they? They also got the first-round bye in the AFC. So now that they’ve fortified their offensive line (even with losing Joe Thuney in a trade with Chicago), plus have a healthier receiver room, I’m supposed to think this season is going to go worse for them? The one thing that did have me dropping their win-loss record from last year is that they have to play not only their division, which should be better this year, but they also face a first-place schedule that includes the Detroit Lions, Baltimore Ravens, a Super Bowl rematch with the Philadelphia Eagles and, oh yeah, they have the Buffalo Bills thrown in there, too. The good news is they get all of those teams except the Bills at home. The bad news is, those teams all got better this offseason, too.

Record Prediction: 13-4

2025 NFL schedule (and video) winners and losers, plus how it’s made | The Athletic

Cancel holiday plans: Chiefs Lions and … Cowboys

They are the only three teams playing on both Thanksgiving and Christmas. Here’s the schedule:

Thanksgiving: Cowboys host Chiefs, Packers visit Lions and Bengals travel to Baltimore, all on different platforms. Great.

Black Friday: Bears at Eagles.

Christmas: Netflix presents … another subscription necessary to watch football. The second act of their three-season deal has the streaming giant airing the Cowboys vs. Commanders and Lions vs. Vikings exclusively.

Most underrated player on all 32 NFL teams ahead of the 2025 season | PFF

KANSAS CITY CHIEFS: LB Leo Chenal

Chenal has a very specific role in Steve Spagnuolo’s defense, operating as an early-down/run-defending specialist and playing just 26% of the team’s possible third- and fourth-down snaps since 2023.

Chenal has thrived in that early-down role, earning the third-best PFF run-defense grade (91.3) at his position since 2023, behind only Bobby Wagner (94.1) and Fred Warner (92.1). He has done this by engineering back-to-back seasons with top-four marks as a run defender, and as he enters a contract year, he should continue to be a key member of the Chiefs’ run-defense unit.

Why the 2025 NFL Schedule Has Even More Big Brand Names in Prime Time | SI

• That the Kansas City Chiefs are the darlings of the schedule makers is no surprise. Andy Reid’s three-time world champions and reigning AFC kingpins maxed out with seven prime-time games and eight stand-alone games. Kansas City’s first 1 p.m. ET kickoff is in Week 7, and it only has two of those before December. All of that is, of course, earned.

Only one other team had six prime-time games. Yup, you guessed it, the Cowboys, who also matched Patrick Mahomes’s dynastic group with eight stand-alone games.

Around the NFL

Roquan Smith on opening with Bills: Revenge is best served cold | NBC Sports

Linebacker Roquan Smith was pleased to see what the NFL had up their sleeve for the Ravens in Week One.

The Ravens’ 2024 season came to an end against the Bills in a 27-25 road loss in the divisional round of the playoffs and they will be back in Buffalo on the first Sunday night of the 2025 season. During an appearance on NFL Network, Smith said that the defeat served as “motivation throughout the offseason” and that makes going back to the scene of Baltimore’s “misery” has him excited to get to September.

“Yeah, just how I like it,” Smith said. “Revenge is best served as a cold dish, you know. So, it will be nice to get up to Buffalo and get a little payback for those guys from the end of the year.”

Week One results don’t always prove predictive in the long haul and Smith said he knows teams have to show their ability “game in and game out” to compete at the highest levels, but there’s still a lot to be said for getting off on the right foot against a team that expects to be a title contender this year.

Colts apologize to Tyreek Hill, Microsoft for now-deleted video | ESPN

The Colts, like most NFL teams, compiled a video to accompany their regular-season schedule release Wednesday evening, but they abruptly removed it from social platforms Wednesday night for multiple reasons, the team said.

“We removed our schedule release video because it exceeded our rights with Microsoft and included an insensitive clip involving Dolphins wide receiver Tyreek Hill. We sincerely apologize to Microsoft and Tyreek,” the team said in a statement to ESPN on Thursday.

The video, which was intended to be a spoof of the popular video game Minecraft, revealed the team’s season opener against Miami with an image of a Dolphin wearing a No. 10 jersey and labeled “Hill” swimming along before he is stopped by a Coast Guard boat with a blaring siren.

In case you missed it on Arrowhead Pride

Chiefs Hot Takes: Replacing Joe Thuney will be the biggest challenge

The Chiefs should have drafted another receiver

While he doesn’t necessarily need a plethora of talent around him to be successful, I’m never opposed to giving quarterback Patrick Mahomes as many weapons as possible; I love the idea of making life easier for the three-time Super Bowl MVP.

Still, I don’t believe the Chiefs needed to draft two wide receivers. Here’s why:

First, Rashee Rice, Xavier Worthy and Hollywood Brown are leading the best group of wide receivers we’ve seen in the Mahomes era. If these three can stay healthy, I fully expect Mahomes to put up MVP numbers.

Then there’s general manager Brett Veach’s selection of wideout Jalen Royals in the fourth round. He could easily have an immediate role. Although I’m not ready to predict he’ll gain anything close to 1,000 yards, it’s not unrealistic to expect that by the end of the season, he could become the team’s No. 4 wideout.