The Chiefs defense was far and away the best unit for the now two-time defending Super Bowl champions Kansas City Chiefs in 2023. The defense was led by stars like Chris Jones, Trent McDuffie, L’Jarius Sneed, who is now in Tennessee, Willie Gay, who’s now in New Orleans, Nick Bolton to name a few guys.
Defensive coordinator Steve Spagnuolo is by far the best defensive coordinator in football at making adjustments game to game specifically for each opponent that the Chiefs face and with some new faces in KC on that side to replace some of the departures Spagnolo is going to be the reason we continue to see KC as one of the top defenses in the NFL in 2024. Let’s look at the 2023 production to see why the Chiefs were a great defense to own in fantasy last season.
Chiefs Defense 2023 Production
The Kansas City defense last season was second in sacks with 57, had eight interceptions and nine fumble recoveries. The defense/special teams also had two touchdowns while allowing 274 points and 4,926 yards for a total score on ESPN fantasy of 140.0 which was the sixth scoring defense in fantasy on ESPN’s PPR game.
Meanwhile Fantasy Pros had the Chiefs unit with the same stats as the 14th ranked defense based on their metrics. The Chiefs defense is one those situations in fantasy that is a great question mark with the subtractions of a couple of key members of that defense that really helped KC lift the Lombardi again in 2023, the defense of the Chiefs will maintain these numbers even with some of the new pieces because of what they retained on the front, which leads into the projections for 2024.
Chiefs Defense 2024 Projections
ESPN has the Chiefs as the tenth ranked defense with the following stat line projections, 44 sacks, 13 interceptions, nine fumble recoveries, two touchdowns, while allowing 356 points and 5858 yards for a total of 105.97 points.
Fantasy Pros has the Chiefs projected with 112 FP for the seventh ranked defense based on their metrics, with the Chiefs defense achieving 50 sacks and 12 interceptions.
The Chiefs defense will need to have huge production from their stars like Chris Jones, Nic Bolton, Trent McDuffie, George Karlaftis, Justin Reid as well as getting good special teams contributions from their returners to replicate the run they had as a defense last season as a fantasy unit. But the main thing that the Chiefs need to have to replicate the success is the development of the young guys they have drafted over the last few years to replace the guys they have lost especially the loss of L’Jarius Sneed.
Sneed’s loss will be a huge one to overcome for Kansas City because he was so good in coverage for them the last few season as he would take the No.1 option for the other team a lot of the time, I feel the Chiefs best corner now is McDuffie, but I feel he needs to stay in the slot to feel his full impact which means that either Chamarri Conner or Joshua Williams is going to have to step up to be opposite of Jaylen Watson this season and Watson is going to have to be the guy to cover the number one options to replace Sneed.
Which is also why the safety play needs to keep up their consistency as well because there will be more pressure on the corners this year. With me saying this, I think Spags is good enough as a coordinator to play around with those pieces he has in a revamped secondary to make it work enough to have a huge impact on making turnover worthy plays happen especially if he generates enough pressure with the front seven to make havoc on the opposing offenses.
Final Thoughts
The Chiefs Defense should be one of the first five to six defenses off the board in your fantasy drafts even with the question marks in the secondary because of the impact players alone, I would try to grab this defense in a hurry especially if defenses like Cleveland, Dallas, San Francisco, New York Jets, or Baltimore start to fly off the board ahead of your pick because of Steve Spagnuolo and his creative ways of making opposing quarterbacks’ lives tougher.
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