Kansas City Chiefs: Predicting AFC West quarterbacks for 2021 season

Every NFL looks for its franchise quarterback, and it’s an amazing feeling when a team finally lands one. Just ask the Kansas City Chiefs about that feeling.

But probably don’t ask the other teams that the Kansas City Chiefs face twice every season. In the AFC West, barring injury, only one team can confidently know who its going to put under center in 2021, and that quarterback is named Patrick Mahomes.

So what about those three other teams?

That’s what I aim to predict in the rest of this column. I’ll take a look at free agency as well as trade targets and draft targets not only for this upcoming offseason, but also the one afterward. In part, I’ll use Spotrac to check out current contracts for current NFL starting quarterbacks and then check out The Draft Network to see which current college quarterbacks could make an impact.

And, of course, I’ll dig into each team’s current roster, as some of these AFC West teams look to be in win-now mode while another looks directionless.

The fourth, of course, drafted very wisely in 2017.

A brief caveat before we begin: everything until this point was written about a month ago. Some personal things (i.e., a new baby) forced me to put this article on hold. During that time, one other AFC West teams looks to have found its quarterback of the future. Now, he’s not nearly as good as Mahomes, I’m basing this on a small sample size, and so it’s not entirely cemented.

But it’s with this quarterback and his team that we start.

Time to peek into the crystal ball.