Chiefs Won’t Change Walker but Graduate-Level Question Still Looms

An unexpected approach

It’s an attitude most don’t expect from a 68-year-old man. Handed his most adversity in 11 years – the last time Kansas City missed the playoffs was 2014 – Reid chose to lean into change. And for 85 consecutive days, he's gotten out of bed with an attack-style approach to changing the Chiefs.

First, he made the most significant staff changes in his Chiefs career, firing wide receivers coach Connor Embree and running backs coach Todd Pinkston (his former wide receiver in Philadelphia). He brought in a pair of all-star replacements, veteran wideouts coach Chad O’Shea and former NFL Offensive Player of the Year DeMarco Murray.

He also restored the accountability and discipline so clearly absent from the Chiefs by allowing Matt Nagy to leave on an expired contract and return Eric Bieniemy.

Then, Reid and Brett Veach tag-teamed to restructure the Chiefs’ offense. High on that list was the Chiefs’ running game, an aspect of the offense so dormant that Patrick Mahomes has never finished a season as the Chiefs' starter alongside a 1,000-yard rusher. Kansas City and New Orleans share the NFL’s longest active droughts without one, eight years. Kareem Hunt and Alvin Kamara in 2017 were the last to do it, respectively.

Reid promises not to change Walker

Both teams went out and signed the premier running backs on the free-agent market this month. Kansas City landed Super Bowl MVP Kenneth Walker while New Orleans inked dominant Travis Etienne.

Mahomes and Walker are just the seventh tandem of Super Bowl MVPs to play together without achieving that honor for the same team, according to Elias Sports Bureau. Kansas City will have four combined Super Bowl MVPs in its backfield, the first such team to field multiple Super Bowl MVPs since Von Miller and Joe Flacco in Denver, and Nick Foles and Malcolm Smith in Jacksonville, both in 2019.

Speaking for the first time since the Chiefs signed Walker to a three-year, $43.05 million contract, Reid vowed that Kansas City would not ask Super Bowl champion to change his game.

Pluses or minuses?

“He's a good football player, and it won't change. He's not gonna change coming to us,” Reid told Judy Battista Saturday at the annual league meeting in Phoenix. "He's still going to be a good football player. As long as he stays healthy and moves forward, good things can happen for you.

“We know that the run game's important and we've got good offensive linemen in front of him, so that will be a plus for him. It should be a plus for our football team.”

It could be a minus, though.

While the Chiefs won’t change Walker, the graduate-level question is whether Walker will change the Chiefs.

Walker is a much different player than Isiah Pacheco, the team’s starter the past four years. He thrives in Shanahan-style outside- and inside-zone concepts, blocking schemes that create space for a patient back like Walker. And those concepts have worked best for him out of under-center formations, something the Chiefs have rarely used with Mahomes.

And because he’s more reliant on his vision and hitting those creases, Walker will absorb more tackles for loss than the Chiefs have seen. Then again, he’ll give them a lot more explosive bursts.

Pacheco, who signed a one-year deal to replace David Montgomery in Detroit, hit holes quickly and, when holes weren’t there, tried to create them. That was usually a disappointing strategy, especially over the past two seasons.

Whether the Chiefs put Mahomes under center a lot more often in 2026 with Walker, and whether they capitalize on the running back’s presence to on play-action fakes and bootleg passes is one of the more fascinating Kansas City question marks.