Trading Tyreek Hill didn’t just provide the Kansas City Chiefs with five draft picks. It also gave coach Andy Reid some motivation. The Chiefs coach told Peter King of NBC Sports he has “a little juice” to keep the Chiefs’ offensive momentum rolling without Hill in the 2022 season. “It’s good for him and it’ll be good for us,” Reid said. “It’s a win-win. I think it’ll help him in his career with the Dolphins. Financially it’s phenomenal for him and his family. “For us, it gives you a little juice that maybe you need when you’ve been someplace for 10 years.”
Reid, 64, is heading into his 10th season in Kansas City after spending 14 years with the Philadelphia Eagles. It’s his 24th consecutive season as an NFL head coach, so it would be hard to blame him if he were more burnt out than motivated to revamp his offense. That does not appear to be the case. The Chiefs went about replacing Hill with a sum-of-all-parts approach, signing JuJu Smith-Schuster and Marquez Valdes-Scantling in free agency and adding versatile speedster Skyy Moore in April’s draft.
It’ll be impossible to replicate Hill’s combination of generational speed and route-running. It’ll be even harder for the Chiefs to find a player who meshes with Patrick Mahomes’ intuitive improvisational skills. That said, Reid seems determined to keep the Chiefs as dominant as ever. We’ll see if the veteran coach can still pull out some new tricks.
