Almost all the time I spend exercising or working alone or driving, I'm dialing up a Chiefs podcast. I listen to more than most: Time's Ours, Locked On, It's Always Sunny In Chiefs Kingdom, KCSN, 4th and 1, Arrowhead Addict, Arrowhead Pride, Roughing the Kicker. I don't catch all of it but I catch a lot of it.

And this past week, after breaking down the roster, several of these podcasts are, I think, overshooting what the '22 Chiefs may be capable of.

These podcasters -- with the lone exception of Nick Jacobs, whose opinions I find pretty "grounded" -- are all predicting a Super Bowl season. And while that's to be expected of Chiefs-friendly media, it sure as **** makes Chiefs Kingdom toxic by Week 10 as the Chiefs are, say, 5-4 and still trying to get their roster figured out. "We should be the go away favorites for the 1 seed!" we're all being primed to spout in November, when the Chiefs may be trying to just hold onto the AFCW. I just listened to three straight Chiefs podcasts predict the Super Bowl unanimously among their hosts, including KC Lab on KCSN, which is normally more grounded. Maybe Kissel's infected them, I don't know.

I appreciate optimism, but routinely predicting a 13-4 or 14-3 schedule against a bear of a calendar with a rookie secondary and a DL held together with scotch tape is irresponsible. Argue all you want that podcasts have no responsibility, and legally you're right. But if you want to be seen as credible, then c'mon now. Anchor yourselves.

I volunteer as tribute as the Chiefs fan on this board who thinks the Chiefs are going to be very, very good this year but on the outside looking in when it comes to the Super Bowl. Pat Kirwan is one of my favorite analysts and he famously (to me) said on Moving the Chains that "you get two ifs, and that's it." And I think this team exceeds two ifs before we're just pie-in-the-sky dreaming.

Mahomes and Reid are Mahomes and Reid. They are incredible, and when they're clicking, unstoppable. Kelce is a top 3 TE all time. JuJu, Watson, McKinnon, Fortson all have a good rapport with him right now. But it is not yet clear to me that this receiving corps can improve or even match the incredible work Tyreek put in last year. Coming as a guy who hates Tyreek's guts as a human being, there's no question he is just a cheat code who can do things nobody else can do and that there are few answers for. I think the logic of having a team with a ton of options for Mahomes makes sense. But this team is going to have to give MVS a lot of snaps to justify his contract, and I'm not high on him. Skyy and Mecole are a rookie and Mecole. JuJu looks like a damn steal, but all these things in the aggregate... I'm not sure they match what Hill did.

It's possible though, because Mahomes and Reid.

The secondary has a lot of promise, but we're completely lying to ourselves about them. This is a roster corps that we know is built with rookies, and we consistently, collectively know will have "growing pains" -- which is the same thing these podcasters recognize while predicting 13-win seasons. If you're winning 13 games, you're not having growing pains!

Spags is a god at taking a pretty talented secondary and making it look great, so that's an area I know we'll be set at long-term. But growing pains means this secondary is going to have embarrassing blown coverages and bad games that will rack up a couple more losses than they should. I think that Trent McDuffie's camp and preseason has shown a lot of promise that I was skeptical of. It's still undeniable that he's had some bumps along the way and that's going to continue as he develops in live games. Watson and Williams look really good as rookies -- they're going to still get roasted by the AFCW's gamut of excellent receivers. The learning curve can only curve up so fast.

It's possible they're fine, though, because Spags.

But those aren't the two things I think will be really problematic for the team.

First, I don't see solutions for this DL, unless Karlaftis is a truly game-changing talent, which is somebody else than he's shown so far, immediately out of the gate. Aside from Karlaftis (who I think is going to be a really great rookie but is already earning predictions to beat Derrick Thomas' record), the DE position is just not very good. Even Karlaftis, who put some great snaps on tape, is still miles away from the ceiling he's going to reach (that's not a criticism, I don't think: he's a rookie). I have no faith in Clark, I am extremely reticent about the Achilles that Dunlap has, as are the Chiefs who kept 6 DEs just to make sure we'll have bodies. Danna is a rotational guy who's fine. We should have found a way to land Robert Quinn.

The DT position has taken a step backward, I think. We all dumped on Jarran Reed, who didn't justify his contract last year, but he offered some passrushing with good run defense, a combo none of our other DTs have, other than Chris Jones, who is amazing. Nnadi got pushed around a bit in the preseason and offers no passrush, Wharton is always going to be who he is, and Saunders remains a frustrating question mark. Saunders did play well in the preseason, which... I'll just say if Saunders reaches his potential, our DL is going to wreck people. But I've been saying that for a year now.

Thank god our linebackers are amazing, because that will make up for some of the deficiencies of the DTs in front of them. We will not be a bottom 5 rush defense, but we could very realistically be a bottom third unit who Buffalo, Ravens, and Broncos run right over. And our passrush is going to be right where it was last year.

The other big problem I have is out of the Chiefs control: the schedule is just brutal. We face a Chargers team that may very well be better than us, plus Tom Brady in the first four weeks. We play both of the Super Bowl contenders. We play everybody who was in the conference championship games. I would personally argue that the 2022 AFC West is the best division we've ever seen (even better than the 2021 NFC West initially looked and mostly was). And there's a stretch we play three road games consecutively -- which I don't think is very common. I personally struggle to recall the last time we did that? My memory fails me sometimes.

The Chargers loaded up their DL and secondary, finally have an OL and a ton of weapons. The Raiders I'm never super worried about but Adams vs. a rookie secondary will be interesting. The Bills have the best roster in the league right now and I would argue the Bengals got better. I'm not super worried about Russell Wilson but that Broncos team may click. We're going to have to beat some combo of the Chargers, Bills, and Bengals to get to the Super Bowl. Any two of them is a murderer's row.

TL:-)R:

Chiefs podcasters are high on their own supply, overlooking problems both manageable and less manageable, to predict the Chiefs are Super Bowl shoo-ins. The Chiefs have a major problem at DL which I fear is going to be their Achilles all season, and a brutal schedule that will take more losses from the team than perhaps this roster deserves. I also have some comparably minor concerns: the rookie secondary, which I think will cost us games, and apparently all of these podcasts think we can replace Hill in the aggregate, whereas I'm not so sure.

Thank you for coming to my TED Talk. Let's argue.
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