Skip navigation
Favorites
Sign up to follow your favorites on all your devices.
Sign up

As the Chiefs ponder whether to renovate Arrowhead Stadium in Missouri or to build a new stadium in Kansas, the face of the franchise is playing both sides of the fence.

“You know, it is really out of my control, honestly,” quarterback Patrick Mahomes said this week in an interview with Alex Sherman of CNBC Sport. “But I think there’s a — Arrowhead is a special place. It’s a special place that doesn’t come around a lot of times. It’s my favorite place to play in the NFL, not just because it’s my team, but you can feel the history of it when you play.”

Advantage Missouri?

“But I know Kansas has done a great bit as well,” Mahomes said. “And I mean, they would build a great stadium and facility and be the top of the top. And so I don’t really have a choice no matter, anyways, but I think either way, we can’t go wrong, because we have the fan base of the Chiefs Kingdom behind us, and they’ll fill that stadium, no matter if it’s in Missouri or Kansas. So I’m just excited for the future of the Kansas City Chiefs.”

The team’s current lease runs through the 2030 season, when Mahomes will be 34. If/when they open a new stadium in Kansas City the following season, he’ll be turning 35.

While he’ll be closer to the end of his career than the beginning, Mahomes could still have several good years left.


Chiefs wide receiver Xavier Worthy is getting his hamstrings ready to run a lot of deep routes this fall, but he’s not saying if he’ll be adding to his responsibilities in a special teams role.

Special teams coordinator Dave Toub said this offseason that Worthy is the “best punt returner nobody knows about right now in the league” and Worthy was asked on Up & Adams if he is expecting to add that role to his list of duties during the 2025 season.

“Oh man, I don’t know,” Worthy said. “Stay tuned. Stay tuned. I can’t drop that yet.

If Worthy does get the opportunity, he’s confident that he’ll be able to make the most of it.

“I think every time I touch the ball, I’m liable to score, so if I have that chance to be on punt return and change the game for my team, I’m gonna do it,” Worthy said.

The Chiefs feel they have improved their depth at receiver this season and that could open the door to giving Worthy more time on special teams. If that pays off as Toub believes it can, the Chiefs will be even harder to beat this time around.


Though the Chiefs won the AFC for the third consecutive season in 2024, quarterback Patrick Mahomes finished the year with a career-low 6.8 yards per attempt.

That signified how Kansas City’s offense was not able to stretch the field throughout the year.

Mahomes noted during the offseason program that the Chiefs plan to change that in 2025 with a healthy receiving corps. In an interview with Up & Adams this week, speedy second-year wideout Xavier Worthy reiterated that notion.

“Coach [Andy] Reid told us during OTAs, Phase I, ‘When you come back, get your hamstrings ready,’” Worthy said. “So, he kind of knew that we were going to be going a little deep in practice, so we kind of got our bodies and our minds ready [for] what we were going to be doing in practice.”

Playing long seasons over the last few years, Reid has let the players work remotely for Phase I before coming into the team facility in Phase II for in-person work.

But Reid also runs a notoriously tough training camp, so Worthy and the rest of Kansas City’s receivers will need to be in top shape for their first practices of the summer later this month.


Chiefs quarterback Patrick Mahomes is the face of the NFL. He’s not the face of the NFL’s push for an inevitable 18th regular-season game.

In an interview with CNBC Sport, Mahomes addressed the topic of another game that counts.

“I think that you’d have to find a way to have more bye weeks, more time spread out,” Mahomes told Alex Sherman of CNBC. “Because, I mean, you’ve seen the amount of injuries that have kind of piled up there at the end of seasons, and you want to have the best players playing in the biggest games. And so if there were a way to get to 18 games, I’m not — I’m not a big fan of it. But if there were a way, I think you got to add some bye weeks in there to give more time for guys’ bodies.”

Bengals quarterback Joe Burrow previously has argued that, if there’s another regular-season game, there should be a second bye.

A second bye makes a ton of sense. Yes, the network hated the two-bye season of 1993, because it diluted the number of week-in and week-out games. But there are six more franchises now than there were then.

The other problem is scheduling. The league justifies an 18th game in part by pointing to the reality of a Super Bowl on President’s Day Weekend. Adding an extra bye will result in the Super Bowl overshooting President’s Day — unless the NFL is willing to revert to the days of Week 1 on Labor Day Weekend. (And maybe it should.)

However it plays out, an 18th game is coming. The only question left is whether the NFL Players Association agrees to it before the 2030 season, or whether the NFL has to lock them out until they inevitably take the best deal on the table before missing game checks in 2031.


The Chiefs elected to franchise tag guard Trey Smith this offseason instead of letting him hit free agency.

Now, Smith and Kansas City are facing a July 15 deadline to strike a long-term deal.

In a recent interview with Up & Adams, Smith was asked what he feels the latest is on the contract front.

“I just leave it to the hands of my agents,” Smith said. “And obviously, the front office staff of the Chiefs are elite. At the end of the day, I let them take care of it. I just have to focus on being the best version of myself, being the best football player, and being prepared for training camp because St. Joe’s is around the corner. That’s going to be — I don’t even want to talk about that right now.”

Smith is currently slated to earn $23.4 million on the franchise tender in 2025.

A sixth-round pick in 2021, Smith has started 67 of 68 possible games in his career, winning Super Bowl LVII and LVIII with the Chiefs. He was a Pro Bowler for the first time in 2024.


Chiefs owner Clark Hunt, who lost a 9-year-old relative in the Texas Hill Country floods, released a statement and announced a donation to flood relief efforts.

FC Dallas, which is owned by Hunt, and Austin FC, Houston Dynamo FC and Major League Soccer are committing $500,000 to recovery efforts.

“Our family is devastated by the tragedy in Central Texas,” Hunt said in a statement. “Our hearts go out to those grieving — in particular, to the parents who lost children, those who lost family members, and the far-too-many who have lost friends, neighbors, and loved ones.

“This has shaken our community to its core. Today, along with our MLS partners, my brother, [Dan], and I are humbled to support those directly assisting the victims of this unimaginable tragedy. In the wake of such sadness, we are awed by the hearts of our fellow Texans, and we are grateful for the true community leaders — in boats, helicopters or trucks filled with food — who are showing up for their neighbors in need.”

Janie Hunt, the great-granddaughter of late American oil baron William Herbert Hunt, the brother of Chiefs founder Lamar Hunt, was one of the campers at Camp Mystic who died. She is one of the 120 confirmed deaths, with at least 170 still missing.

“The FC Dallas family is heartbroken over the disaster in Central Texas,” Dan Hunt said. “We are grieving alongside the families and communities who are living through the unimaginable right now.”

The Cowboys, Texans, Vikings and the NFL Foundation each donated $500,000. The Dallas Mavericks, Houston Rockets and San Antonio Spurs, along with the NBA Players Association, have donated at least $2 million toward recovery efforts.

Major League Baseball’s Texas Rangers and Houston Astros each donated $1 million.


July 15 is an important date on the NFL’s offseason calendar. This year, there’s only one team and one player for whom the date has importance.

Next Tuesday is the deadline for signing any franchise-tagged player to a long-term deal.

For the Chiefs and guard Trey Smith, it means the window closes in six days on turning his one-year, $23.4 million franchise tender into a multi-year contract.

Smith signed the one-year contract in early March, making the payment fully guaranteed. And that makes sense, for two reasons. First, because the franchise tag for offensive linemen doesn’t distinguish between tackle, guard, and center, the tackle market drives the number. For Smith, his $23.4 million instantly makes him the highest-paid guard in the NFL — by $2.9 million.

Second, the franchise tag can be rescinded before its signed. That has happened three times. Twice, Chiefs coach Andy Reid did it. (Both were during his time with the Eagles.)

For the Chiefs and Smith, the challenge becomes turning that large one-year payment into a multi-year deal. The usual approach is to fully guarantee the player the first year and second year (at a 20-percent raise over the first year), with two or three non-guaranteed years on the back end.

For Smith, that would mean $51.48 million fully guaranteed over the first two years. Which would equate to an average for the first two years of $25.74 million.

Absent a multi-year deal, Smith would be on track for the franchise tag again in 2026, at a price of $28.08 million. If not tagged, he’d be eligible for unrestricted free agency.

Given the magnitude of the tag and the realities of the guard position, it could be a challenge to get a deal done before Tuesday of next week. For Smith, the choice is to proceed at $23.4 million in 2025 with either $28.08 million or a trip to the open market in 2026 — or to accept the team’s best offer on a multi-year deal.

Basically, the team needs to offer him enough to get him to trade in the very large bird currently in his hand.

A sixth-round pick from Tennessee in 2024, Smith became an instant starter at right guard. He has started 67 of 68 regular-season games in his four-year career. He also has taken 100 percent of the snaps in 13 postseason games.


A radio host in Kansas City had some things to say about a shirtless July 4 image of Chiefs quarterback Patrick Mahomes. Now, Mahomes’s trainer wants a piece of said radio host.

Via TMZ.com, Kevin Kietzman of KCMO called Mahomes “fat.” Keizman also said Mahomes was an “embarrassment.”

Trainer Bobby Stroupe fired back, with a now-deleted message on Twitter.

“Send me your location,” Stroupe reportedly said. “You obviously need attention. If you want to see what in shape is -- go make it through a practice at [training camp] or run hurry up offense scrambling back to back to back plays. You don’t have a clue what it takes. It’s not a look, it’s performance.”

Stroupe is right. Mahomes isn’t getting ready to star in a Rambo reboot. He has always shown up and performed well during his seven years as a starter. He’s already one of the best quarterbacks to ever play the game, with five Super Bowl appearances and two overtime losses in the AFC Championship.

Skinny players are actually at greater risk of getting injured. A little thickness operates as natural armor that keeps a player going when he’s getting banged around by much larger opponents.

By getting caught up in how Mahomes looks with a shirt off, Kietzman is telling on himself regarding his lack of understanding as to how football works. Mahomes will be far better than fine. Because he always has been. And it’s safe to say he always will be, for as long as he wants to be.


Travis Kelce is 35 years old and is currently the oldest tight end in the NFL. And that means the Chiefs don’t expect him to sustain quite the same level of play he was at during his prime. But they think they can get prime Kelce when they really need him.

Chiefs General Manager Brett Veach says Kelce can still play like an elite tight end in the biggest moments.

“The great ones know how to find it,” Veach said, via Adam Teicher of ESPN. “They know where it’s buried, and they know how to access it. And they can’t access it at that age week in and week out, but when they need it, they know how to find it.”

Last year Kelce never had more than 100 receiving yards in any game of the regular season, then promptly had 117 yards in the Chiefs’ first playoff game.

“We’ve all seen it over the last few years,” Veach said. “There are periods throughout the season where you’re like, ‘This might be it.’ But when the games are the most important and the lights are the brightest, he finds it somewhere.”

The Chiefs are counting on Kelce to be able to find it for at least one more year.


Chiefs quarterback Patrick Mahomes and Raiders edge rusher Maxx Crosby tend to mix it up a bit when they play one another twice a year as division rivals.

While Mahomes has gotten the better of the Raiders throughout his career, sporting a 10-2 record against the club entering 2025, the two players share an appreciation for each other’s game. Recently, Crosby said that while he sees himself as the league’s best pass rusher, he sees Mahomes as the best quarterback.

In an interview with Up & Adams, Mahomes noted Crosby is one of the toughest competitors he has to face.

“I have so much respect for all those guys in the league that are about their craft, they’re about being better and better,” Mahomes said. “Like he said, we’re going to compete. We know when we step on that football field, we’re going against each other, it’s the Raiders, it’s the Chiefs — it’s two of the greatest in the league going at each other snap [after] snap and continuing to do it twice a year.

“And so, there’s so much healthy respect, but when we get on that football field, it’s going to be trash talk. It’s going to be going out there, he’s going to try to get to me, I’m going to be trying to make big plays happen. But those are the guys — I always say, obviously, he’s on the other team, so I want to go against him and beat him. That’s the guys you want on your team, the guys who are going to leave it all out there, no matter what the score is, and be the best they can possibly be every snap.”

But is Crosby the league’s best edge rusher?

“I think he’s sacked me the most out of anyone I’ve ever played against, so to me, he’s the best pass rusher I’ve played against,” Mahomes said. “So, no offense to any other pass rusher — just putting it out there. But he is the best one that I’ve gone up against because he goes out there and he gives you the effort, he has the moves, and he has the skill. And I think it’s hard to have all three of those and have them year in and year out.”

Crosby has sacked Mahomes six times in his career.

The first meeting between Mahomes and Crosby in 2025 is set for Week 7 in Kansas City.