The Kansas City Chiefs were not a scary defense for quarterbacks to face during the 2025 season. While defensive tackle Chris Jones was a monster in the middle, the edge saw a sub-par effort from George Karlaftis and, collectively, produced just 35 sacks, a bottom-10 mark across the NFL.
When you paint the picture of what went wrong last fall, most will point to the team's offensive stars: quarterback Patrick Mahomes, pass-catchers Xavier Worthy and Travis Kelce, and right tackle Jawaan Taylor, the latter of whom never played reliably enough to protect the blindside. In truth, they and the entire running back room are all to blame to a degree for the team's failures.
Defensively, though, there was no greater failure than the inability of the Chiefs' edge rushers to make game-changing plays. Even with the third-highest blitz rate in the league, Kansas City's pressure rate dropped to 39%. On third-and-long situations, the Chiefs were able to sack the QB just 6% of the time, according to NFL Pro.
What led to this? In short, the Kingdom, up and down the depth chart at the position, was far from deadly. Mike Danna had one sack in 351 snaps. Felix Anudike-Uzomah never saw the field. Karalaftis' production fell off a cliff in the final 11 games of the season, having amassed just 1.5 sacks. Kansas City let Danna and Charles Omenihu go in the offseason, and now, they're hoping its youth can be the answer the Chiefs desperately need along the edge.
Chiefs could have answers at DE with first and second-year studs
Luckily, KC has hope at the edge spot moving forward, even if their production is largely unproven in the NFL.
2025 third-round draft pick Ashton Gillotte had 1.5 sacks, one interception, and amassed 38 total tackles during his Mack Lee Hill Award-winning season. Gillotte also produced 24 pressures on 268 pass-rush snaps, and was far and away the most impressive rookie on the team, coming on late in the season to provide hope amidst the team's six-game slide to close out the campaign. He should be in line for more opportunities this year.
His partner-in-crime should be the team's second-round draft pick, Oklahoma Sooners star R Mason Thomas. As the backbone of a strong Brent Venables-led defense, Thomas had a 35% pass-rush win rate in the SEC that should translate to the NFL. If Thomas' impact is immediate, suddenly, KC's most glaring weakness on defense could become somewhat of a strength.
There are other issues this team needs to fix, but having such a key position potentially fixed is a huge step in the right direction for a franchise that was considered the cream of the crop until last year.
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