10 Biggest Questions: How will the Chiefs manage their slot receivers?

Kansas City has many wide receivers who can play inside. How with the team use them all?

For the third straight year, I’m considering the 10 biggest questions I have for the Kansas City Chiefs for 2025.

Whenever I’ve thought about the Chiefs’ 2025 wide receiver corps, my brain has turned to mush.

I’m certainly excited about the players now on the roster. Before his injury last season, Rashee Rice was on pace to be in the All-Pro conversations. Late in the season, Xavier Worthy looked great. Coming into 2025, Hollywood Brown is healthy. I believe in what rookie Jalen Royals can do with the ball in his hands. As a fifth wide receiver, JuJu Smith-Schuster will be awesome.

But when I think about the team’s wideouts, the word that keeps coming back to me is duplication. This can be positive or negative.

On the positive side, Kansas City finally solved an issue it’s had for two seasons: it has enough explosive playmakers. With Rice, Worthy, Brown and Royals, the team has four players who are credible threats to score on any kind of passing play. This, of course, is extremely hard for opponents to defend against. Defensive players must be in perfect positions — and tackle flawlessly — to avoid giving up long plays.

But there’s also a negative aspect: all of these players tend to thrive from the slot.

When Rice was on his late-season tear, the Chiefs would bunch him with other pass-catchers to get him off the line of scrimmage, almost setting a pick to run over the middle and explode with the ball. This allowed Rice to get favorable matchups on linebackers or safeties who had no chance to keep up with his speed — and get great angles.

As Worthy developed, we could see that he was too small to play outside; he lacked the length or playing strength to work through contact. But when he’s able to get a free release, his speed and route running make him effective. It just needs to happen in space.

While Brown has experience playing outside, I don’t think it’s where he provides the most value. He brings more craft to his routes than Worthy does, but he’s also small enough to struggle against contact — and with his injury history, asking him to fight through it is risky.

At Utah State, Royals was at his best when he could get the ball and create an explosive play. Over time, I think he could develop into an outside receiver — but if we’re being realistic, it will be hard for him to do that as a rookie. Early on, I think Kansas City will use him in screens and gadget plays to get him the ball, giving him time to develop on the outside.

All four of these players are great with the ball in their hands, but will probably need to play in similar roles to reach their potential. While it’s a strange way to build a wide receiver group, it still fascinates me.

How can the Chiefs make it all work?

It begins with head coach Andy Reid, who will have to design his passing offense around the strengths (and limitations) of these players. I expect Kansas City to make more use of condensed under-center formations for their stacks. This will make it easier to prevent defenses from pressing the receivers. While the Chiefs have always used bunches and stacks, they’ve generally done it from spread formations.

But Kansas City won’t be able to run its entire offense out of condensed alignments. It will still need to use some spread formations to keep defenses guessing. Which of the team’s wideouts would be the most natural X receiver in these looks?

I’d start with Rice. Extending back to his days at SMU, he’s flashed the ability to beat man coverage on the outside — mainly with downfield vertical routes. Rice has the size to work through contact, along with enough speed to dust defenders.

For him to be most effective in this role, however, Rice needs to continue to grow his route tree. He’s great on vertical routes and slants from the outside, but can we see some comeback routes? How about double-move routes? I believe in Rice’s talent. But to be effective as an X receiver, he’ll have to show us more.

I continue to believe that Worthy will have a hard time thriving in this role. When he did it last season, it never went that well. Nor do I think that as a rookie, we’ll see Royals play outside very often. But Brown will probably get some snaps as an X — simply because he’s done it in the NFL with some success.

So we’ll probably get something of a committee approach as the team works its way around the weaknesses of all four players. And if anyone deserves the benefit of the doubt for finding schematic solutions, it’s Reid.

Still, I am fascinated to see how it all plays out. We didn’t get a single game of Rice, Brown, and Worthy last season. A year ago, Reid had a vision when he brought all these guys in — and now, Royals will be part of the mix. I can’t wait to see what it finally looks like.