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The Kansas City Chiefs' 2024 season was interesting to say the least. They set a franchise record with 15 wins, but 11 of those victories came in one-score games. They made the Super Bowl for the third consecutive year, but the Philadelphia Eagles blew them out on that big stage. Kansas City was missing one of its premier offensive playmakers for the majority of the year, but now, he's back. 

Wide receiver Rashee Rice suffered a torn LCL during the Week 4 victory over the Los Angeles Chargers, and missed the remainder of the year. The player who set Chiefs rookie records for receiving touchdowns (7) and receptions (79) is now expected to headline a wide receivers room that doesn't look very different from last year, but nevertheless, Rice believes this group is going to put on a show. 

"We got a lot of guys," Rice said, via Aaron Wilson of KPRC2. "We deep in depth in the wide receiver group. We're going to be explosive this year. We're just excited to put on a show to be honest. We know it's gonna be a show. Only thing in the way right now is time, so we're just waiting patiently."

The Chiefs lost DeAndre Hopkins in free agency, but did re-sign Marquise Brown and JuJu Smith-Schuster. Kansas City also made an interesting selection in Jalen Royals out of Utah State with the No. 133 overall pick in the 2025 NFL Draft. He was named First Team All-Mountain West in 2023 after catching 71 passes for 1,080 yards and 15 touchdowns. Those 15 touchdown receptions ranked second in the FBS behind Brian Thomas Jr. Royals played in just seven games in 2024 before a foot injury ended his season, but he recorded an FBS third-best 119.1 receiving yards per game before getting hurt.

The Chiefs also boast the speedy Xavier Worthy, who racked up 742 scrimmage yards and nine total touchdowns as a rookie. He set a Super Bowl record for most receiving yards (157) and receiving touchdowns (2) by a rookie. Perhaps Worthy and Rice could be a dynamic duo for what was the No. 14 passing offense in the NFL last season (222.4 yards per game). 

Rice's prognostication of explosive plays in the future of the offense points toward what was the team's most glaring issue last season -- one that was the culmination of what is now a years-long trend.

According to Tru Media, the Chiefs ranked just 27th in the NFL in explosive plays per dropback last season, gaining more than 15 yards only 6.2% of the time they dropped back to pass. That figure ranked ahead of only the Browns, Giants, Patriots, Dolphins and Bears. 

It was also a far cry from where the Chiefs used to be. They led the league by a mile in explosives per dropback during Mahomes' first season as the starter, gaining 16 or more yards 11.9% of the time he dropped back to pass. But since then, their explosive rate has declined with each passing season: 10.1% in 2019, 9.9% in 2020, 9.4% in 2021, 7.7% in 2022, 7.3% in 2023 and finally 6.2% in 2024.

Teams have played Kansas City differently in recent years in an effort to take away those big gains, and the Chiefs have mostly responded by indulging them and matriculating the ball downfield with a ball control style of offense. To wit: Mahomes' air yards per attempt average was over 8 yards in three of his first four seasons, but dipped below 7 yards in both 2023 and 2024, hitting a nadir of 6.3 yards last season.

Throwing underneath more often will naturally lead to fewer explosives, but Rice himself is capable of turning short gains into long ones anyway. In his three-plus games last season, Rice had six explosive receptions despite averaging just 5.2 air yards per target. The rest of the wide receiver corps had only 30 explosives combined for the entire regular season. Some of that was due to the fact that Brown, like Rice, missed almost the entire year. Some of it was due to the fact that Mahomes and Worthy seemingly couldn't get on the same page on deep balls for much of the season. And some of it was due to the fact that they gave a ton of snaps to players who don't produce explosives very often. 

In 2025, more of the snaps should go to players who can create big plays. Rice is an explosive waiting to happen thanks to his after-catch prowess and ability to win deep downfield in a way many of Kansas City's other receivers can't, while both Worthy and Brown can take the top off the defense with their speed and and accelerate into open space when they get the ball underneath. Shifting snaps -- and targets -- in their direction, and taking them away from players like Smith-Schuster, Hopkins, Justin Watson and Mecole Hardman, should be a big boon to Kansas City's efforts to rediscover the explosive play rate that made the early Mahomes era offenses some of the most dynamic in league history.