Kansas City traded Tyreek Hill in the offseason, and that's reason to think the offense will take a step back this season. But at least one player, new safety Justin Reid, doesn't think the offense will miss a beat this year.
Reid spent his first four seasons with the Texans, and now he'll be starting for a Kansas City secondary that also lost a key starter (Tyrann Mathieu). But he's confident the offense will keep humming along even with Hill in Miami.
"The offense is going to do what we always do," Reid said on Good Morning Football. "We're going to come out, we're going to put up 100 points. We have the greatest quarterback in the game. And when you have a quarterback, and you have an offensive system, a coordinator that is able to just mix things up all the time -- you're always going to put up points."
Kansas City added JuJu Smith-Schuster and Marquez Valdes-Scantling in free agency, then drafted Skyy Moore in the second round. (The rookie has missed a lot of OTAs due to injury, so better to look at the veterans for early contributions.) Neither free agent can reasonably be considered comparable to Hill. But the offensive performance without Hill in recent years has been pretty solid.
Over the last three seasons, there have been seven games that Hill either missed entirely or barely played (under 20 percent of the snaps). That's setting aside a Week 17 game against the Chargers were most starters, including Patrick Mahomes, were held out. In most of those 7 games, the offense has been just fine, with other receivers stepping up with strong numbers.
Table below shows the team and Mahomes' numbers in those seven games, plus his top 2 pass catchers in those contests. Four different wide receivers stepped up to lead the team in receiving in the course of those games.
| KANSAS CITY WITHOUT TYREEK, 2019-2021 | |||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Year | Opp | Result | Mahomes | No. 1 Receiver | No. 2 Receiver |
| 2019 | Jacksonville | W, 40-26 | 378 yards, 3 TDs | Watkins (9-198-3) | Kelce (3-88-0) |
| 2019 | at Oakland | W, 28-10 | 443 yards, 4 TDs | Robinson (6-172-2) | Kelce (7-107-1) |
| 2019 | Baltimore | W, 33-28 | 374 yards, 3 TDs | Hardman (2-97-1) | Kelce (7-89-0) |
| 2019 | at Detroit | W, 34-30 | 315 yards, 0 TD | Kelce (7-85-0) | Watkins (3-54-0) |
| 2019 | Indianapolis | L, 19-13 | 321 yards, 1 TD | Pringle (6-103-1) | Hardman (4-79-0) |
| 2019 | L.A. Chargers | W, 24-17 | 182 yards, 1 TD | Kelce (7-92-1) | McCoy (4-28-0) |
| 2021 | at Denver | W, 28-24 | 270 yards, 2 TDs | Hardman (8-103-0) | Pringle (5-56-0) |
Mahomes threw for over 300 yards in five of those contests. In three of them he threw under 2 TDs, so maybe that's a little concerning. But in only one game (a win over the Chargers) did he finish with poor numbers. And he had multiple highly productive pass catchers in most of those games as well -- including a bunch of wide receivers not as good as Hill, and arguably not as good as Smith-Schuster or even Valdes-Scantling, either.
Reid's optimism can be taken with a grain of salt, but I don't think we need to scale back expectations for the offense too much. Question will be which wide receivers will benefit, but I think there will be a couple of viable targets most weeks.
--Andy Richardson