Offseason Stealing Signals, Chiefs & Texans

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I’m not going to write much of an intro today, as I just want to get going on this project. Today, we’re continuing the plan in the early going of targeting offenses with limited coaching and philosophical changes, hoping to dial in the early projections process with some teams that lean to the science side of the art/science balance. If you’re wondering when you might see a certain team, hopefully that will help you plan, as you can expect a bunch of the teams where I have better trends to build off in these early posts, before I have to do more guesswork on the back end of the project. Both the Chiefs and Texans acquired new lead RBs this offseason, though that’s about where the comparisons for these two offenses stop. Let’s start with Kansas City, who I hilariously thought I didn’t have a lot of notes for at first before writing thousands of words breaking everything down. Kansas City Chiefs Key Stat: Rashee Rice — 29% TPRR, 67.9% catch rate (career rate now 74.6%) Relevant Signals Quote: “When you go back to that first game where (Xavier) Worthy was hurt right away, and recall that Brown seemed to take over his role in the gameplan en route to 16 targets and 10 catches for 99 yards, including a lot of manufactured stuff, it’s hard not to see the entire season’s elevated aDOT as a response to that shoulder issue that was known to be a reinjury risk.” ( Field Tippers ) Chiefs Field Tippers pass-catcher analysis If you’re tired of me being too high on the Chiefs, maybe turn away. It’s not like my opinion didn’t change due to the 2025 season, but one of the things I’ve been arguing about the Chiefs for a few years is they seemed to be trying to build a better skill position unit to get back to a more dominant offense, like they had earlier in Patrick Mahomes’ career. That has required trying to combat the different ways they’ve been played defensively, and it hasn’t worked between some bad injury luck and also a weird devaluation of the running back position that seemed to be a tactical error. Last year was a low point, capped by Mahomes tearing his ACL in Week 14, and there’s not much of the vibe I just described about this team being a sleeping giant, with more of fixation on early-season expectations of run-heaviness. Mahomes seems like he’ll be ready for Week 1, but the team doesn’t even want to commit to that. And yet. Is this not the setup for it to actually hit, when expectations are low? They missed the playoffs entirely last year, so that urgency they’ve felt to be better offensively should be at an all-time high. Among the changes they made were finally addressing RB, and also bringing back offensive coordinator Eric Bieniemy, who was last with the team in 2022 when Mahomes threw for a career-high 5,250 passing yards, plus 41 TDs, both of which led the league. They lost two key corners before drafting one in the top 10 in a series of moves that might put a little more pressure on their pass defense, which could force the offense into trickier spots, although another unique thing this year is the 10th-most favorable schedule in the league, which runs against the typical annual discussion of how their schedule is one of the most difficult in the league. Last year, when they were struggled a bit, they did get aggressive, averaging 65.3 plays before Mahomes’ injury, and never totaling fewer than 57 in any game (before they had games down at basement levels of 42 and 43 in Weeks 16 and 17 to pull their season average down to 62.4)…