Guess what? Wide receivers are still important

What started as an exercise in proving receiver value morphed into an analysis of the Chiefs' mistakes, unsustainability of their Super Bowl result, and fixing things going forward

I don’t think I need to dedicate thousands of words to the topic of why wide receiver - one of the most expensive positions by cap charges in the NFL - is, in fact, something to prioritize in NFL team-building. But there was a post-Super Bowl take that the Chiefs have somehow provided a blueprint for the rest of the NFL on how to win without investing much at the position.

There might not be a lot of value in critiquing an idea that garnered 480 quotes and 248 replies to only 99 likes, but as I started to dig into the transitions of the Chiefs passing offense over the last few seasons, lots of applicable lessons appeared. There’s a lot of clarity to gain by looking at how the Chiefs passing game declined in 2023, but not in 2022, the first post-Tyreek Hill season. We can apply those lessons to how the Chiefs should build their receiver group this offseason and going forward.

I don’t think the Chiefs believe in any model of not paying wide receivers, but if they did, it started with the decision in the 2022 offseason to trade Hill rather than concede to his contract demands. Mahomes’ efficiency during 2022 is some evidence that you can get away with letting a single, elite wide receiver walk. But that necessitates building a competent group to fill the vacuum, something the Chiefs didn’t do last year.

In an MVP season, Patrick Mahomes’ overall efficiency by EPA was almost perfectly aligned with his prior average, driven ever so slightly less by pure passing (pass attempts excluding interceptions) and a bit more rushing juice - mostly scrambles. The Chiefs seemed to have cracked the zero-elite-WRs code last year, as Mahomes walked away with his second MVP and Super Bowl to end the season.

Things didn’t go so well in the 2023 regular season, with Mahomes’ passing efficiency taking a major dive and his turnover losses increasing. While a lot of the focus on the Chiefs’ struggles during the regular season were on his lack of wide receiver talent, the team saw wider, cross-positional drops in efficiency. In fact, their drop in wide receiver efficiency was lower than at other position groups.

Wide receivers run the most routes, so the collective impact of the smallest efficiency decline is still the most impactful. If we calculate the “total yards lost” to the decline in efficiency by position (decline in yards per route run multiplied by 2023 routes), by position in comes to:

• Wide receivers: 344 yards

• Tight ends: 280 yards

• Running backs: 161 yards

The wide receivers were an issue for the Chiefs, but they weren’t the only factor causing drag on the Chiefs passing offseason during the 2023 season. But 2022 was a typical year for the Chiefs either, having lost Hill and transitioning to a shared group at wide receiver. Looking back further at the historical efficiency rankings for the three positional groups gives us a better idea of how they bounced from pre-2022 to the following seasons.

• 2018-2021 team efficiency rankings

  • Wide receivers: 15th

  • Tight ends: 2nd

  • Running backs: 15th

• 2022

  • Wide receivers: 19th

  • Tight ends: 1st

  • Running backs: 7th

• 2023

  • Wide receivers: 27th

  • Tight ends: 7th

  • Running backs: 15th

The wide-receiver yards per route run (YPRR) numbers were depressed in earlier years for the Chiefs relative to the rest of the NFL because they simply have more wideout on the field. At PFF, Zach Drapkin (now with the Eagles) found that wide receiver YPRR has an inverse relationship with the number of them on the field, a finding that was replicated and furthered by Tej Seth of Sumer Sports.

One way that the Chiefs mitigated the loss of Hill and weakening of the receiver group was to have fewer of them on the field. According to nflfastR, the Chiefs used 11 personnel (1 RB, 1 TE, 3 WR) 65.4% of the times from 2018-2021, then 58.1% in 2022 and 2023. Therefore, the Chiefs decline in per-route efficiency for wide receivers came with what should have been favorable conditions, i.e. fewer of them on the field.

Even still, the Chiefs weren’t hugely efficient as a group overall with Hill in 2018-2021, and only slipped somewhat in 2022, before a crash in 2023. I’m sure there are numerous reasons as to why this was the case, but the depth and balance in the receiver room jumps out when comparing. In 2022 and 2023, the Chiefs were 18th and 17th in wide receiver cap spending, but the money was spread out in vastly different ways.

In 2022, no wide receiver accounted for more than 2.5% of the cap, with three between 1.5-2.5%: Marquez Valdes-Scantling, Mecole Hardman, and JuJu Smith-Schuster.

In 2023, the structure of Valdes-Scantling’s contract more than doubled his cap charge, and the Chiefs relied fully on rookie deals or low-end veteran numbers to fit into the same tier of overall spending.