McCourty Talks Pros, Cons of Chiefs’ Bieniemy Reunion

Accountability wasn't the Chiefs' issue

Accountability wasn’t what the offense lacked in 2025. Patrick Mahomes and Travis Kelce were the first to raise their hands and accept blame for a unit that slipped dramatically, even when some of the issues weren’t attributed to them.

What the Chiefs lacked offensively in 2025 was discipline. Holding, false starts and illegal-formation penalties were up, handcuffing the offense with every piece of laundry. Running backs too many times lacked vision and patience and Mahomes and his receivers were off target on multiple occasions.

Dropped passes were rampant, and too often receivers lacked the ability to separate from defenders. As a result, the offense endured its worst season with Mahomes as its starting quarterback, including fewest points per game (21.3), yards per game (320.6) and third-down conversion rate (37.4 percent).

Chiefs aren't expected to change schematically

But the Chiefs could’ve chosen a different route. Instead of delegating more of the offense to someone with fresh ideas from another system, the most predictable offense in the NFL, the one in Reid’s words that lost too much respect in 2025, still has Reid with 51 percent of control. Other than adding Bieniemy’s discipline, the offense hasn’t changed.

“When I first got the news,” McCourty said, “my initial reaction was that we always talked about their offense this past season, we said, ‘Well, they need an introduction to some new concepts and some outside-the-box ideas that we haven't seen around there.”

That’s the most obvious knock on the move to reunite Bieniemy with the Chiefs’ offense. But it’s important to note that since Bieniemy left the Chiefs in 2023 to call his own plays in Washington, he’s become a better coach.

Not only did he have that experience under Ron Rivera with the Commanders in 2023, he also coached a year as offensive coordinator at UCLA. And this past year, he got a front-row seat in learning Ben Johnson’s offense in Chicago.

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