I’ve talked about this before, but one of the things that I love about the start of NFL training camp is how optimistic the fanbase of every team is. Why is everyone feeling so good? Mostly because there are a lot of unknowns. In general (though not always, as we’ll see below), fans tend to take the unknown and extrapolate that into a good outcome for us. Everything, many of us like to think, will be coming up Milhouse when it’s all said and done.
We also do a lot of extrapolating of storylines that are less fun. When we see a player struggle for a few plays, or over the course of a few practices, we raise our eyebrows. When a player is working through an injury, we can’t help but wonder if he’ll ever get back to full strength, or even back on the field. That’s just human nature. We love to take the information we have and then try and build it into a projection of the future, for good or for bad.
As time passes, and training camp folds into preseason and the regular season begins, a lot of training camp storylines (good and bad) turn out to be more fantasy than reality. But which is which? What points towards the regular season (and hopefully playoffs), and what is nothing more than a dream (or nightmare)? It’s my job to try and sift through what’s real and what is not.
So it’s once again time to play “real or fantasy,” in which I’ll go through some of the main storylines early in Chiefs camp and give my best shot as to whether they point towards something solid or something that will be nothing but a faded memory by October (or sooner). How this will work is I’ll name the storyline, then talk about it for a bit, then rule whether I believe it’s real or fantasy.
There’s a lot to cover here, so let’s dive right in starting with the biggest storyline of training camp; Whether the Chiefs’ offense will change.
I want to believe.
(shout out again to Farzin V, who is at camp pretty much daily providing video clips)
Report after report from camp is that the Chiefs are practicing more under center than what we’ve seen in the past. It’s tough to quantify such things, of course, and perhaps this is just a matter of people seeing what they want to see. But any common sense modification of the offense would include more under center looks, given Kenneth Walker’s proclivity there and the way modern NFL offenses are going to attack current defensive trends.
Perhaps this is me just being overly optimistic (I tend to be guilty of that), but I think that we’re going to see Reid go a little more this direction this season. It just seems impossible to me that a guy who has either started or followed multiple offensive trends over the course of his multiple-decade career is going to just ignore the way current defenses need to be attacked. Perhaps Reid has lost his fastball (and the last several years give me pause on that), but he’s never shied away from modern trends before, and it would be odd for him to start now.
Additionally, it’s at least nice to see that the Chiefs are not only practicing under center looks in goal line work, 11x11, and the run game, but they’re even doing it in 7x7 looks so Mahomes can practice throwing out of a traditional dropback.
This isn’t unheard of in camp, to be clear. But it’s nice to see. And I want to believe, and therefore it shall be.
When I reviewed Peter Woods’ college film (from both 2025 and the prior season, when he had significantly better statistical results), I noted that Woods has a stratospheric ceiling given his combination of power and athleticism. And since the pads have come on, he’s been showing off those traits, particularly in 1x1 drills against offensive linemen.
(shout out to Jesse Newell for this video clip. Jesse does terrific work)
While this rep is against backup Hunter Nourzad, Woods has had success against more established starters as well. This snap just serves well to demonstrate the traits Woods has that make him such a high-ceiling player. First, he shows off his explosiveness with a little stutter into a swim. And he shows the power he’s got in his hands by using that left arm to shove Nourzad off-balance as he moves into the swim.
Finally, Woods is able to show his agility and athleticism/burst to fly past Nourzad after he’s gained an edge.
Woods hasn’t just made noise during individual drills. He’s shown himself to be a real handful against the run in run game drills and has been difficult to block in 11x11 work as well.
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