Retooling Kansas City Chiefs The Team To Beat In 2021

The Kansas City Chiefs may have suffered an embarrassing beatdown in the Super Bowl, but their retooling on the offensive line has the bookmakers believing that they can regain the Vince Lombardi Trophy next season.

Patrick Mahomes v Tom Brady failed to live up the pregame hype as the Kansas City quarterback spent much of the game running for his life, and had it not been for some drops from receivers at key moments some of his incredible attempted throws could have become iconic ones.

The receivers weren’t the biggest reason for KC’s failure to win back-to-back Super Bowls. That blame was laid squarely at the feet of an offensive line that played the role of ‘offensive turnstile’ throughout the showdown with the Buccaneers in Tampa.

Therefore it was no real shock when veteran starters Eric Fisher and Mitchell Schwarz were jettisoned at the end of the season, but right tackle Mike Remmers has been retained and Austin Reiter is reportedly considering a return.

Also poised to return is right guard Laurent Duvernay-Tardif, who honourably opted out the 2020 season to work in the medical profession amid the COVID-19 pandemic. Having him back in the fold will feel like a new addition and he has shot straight to the top of the early off-season depth charts.

There will be some new faces in the fold too. The Chiefs have brought in left guard Joe Thuney from the New England Patriots on a five-year $80million deal – an attempt to finally solve a position that has been problematic for them in recent years.

Also arriving in Kansas is veteran guard Kyle Long, who spent the 2020 season serving as an analyst after an ugly departure from the Chicago Bears at the end of the 2019 campaign. If Long can recapture the form he showed before injuries derailed his Bears career then he could be an excellent addition to this offensive line group.

Kansas City are not done just yet in their recruitment though, with free agency up and running and the draft just around the corner, but the retooling is well and truly underway and the early signs are promising for an offense that already has elite weapons in place. The question is can they be better than they were in 2020? According to Librengpusta, the answer is ‘yes’. At +450 the Chiefs are the team to beat in 2021, not Brady and the Bucs.