As the month of September comes to a close, there’s still plenty the football world doesn’t know about the Kansas City Chiefs. Andy Reid’s team will evolve and grow as the year progresses, but the 2025-26 campaign isn’t off to the best of starts.
That certainly applies to parts of the offensive line. Right tackle Jawaan Taylor, in particular, isn’t playing up to standard. That’s true for the third year in a row, spanning across the duration of his tenure in Kansas City.
Penalties and inconsistency are plaguing Taylor once again. Despite that, Reid doesn’t seem too worried about his performance.
Andy Reid Addresses Jawaan Taylor’s Struggles With Penalties
Speaking to the media on Wednesday, Reid backed his starting tackle. While the infractions are far from ideal, the Chiefs‘ head coach believes Taylor is a productive player.
“When he doesn’t have the penalties, his percentage has been good,” Reid said. “You could argue [he’s] one of the better tackles in his pass protection game. I’m conscious of that, and then I’ll take care of it from there. I might be giving you a call — you’re looking good (laughs).”
Putting blocking efforts aside for a moment, Taylor is still getting penalized at an alarming rate. In 2023, he led the league with 20 according to NFL Penalties’ online tracker. The site doesn’t factor in offsetting or declined mishaps into its count. Last year, Taylor was flagged 16 times for 115 yards in all. This year, he’s already tied for the NFL lead with six penalties in three games. Reid took the high road, but offensive coordinator Matt Nagy wasn’t as polite when he spoke about Taylor on September 12.
The data doesn’t back up Reid’s claim that Taylor is one of football’s better pass-protecting tackles. Using Pro Football Focus’ advanced stats for an example, he ranks 51st out of 101 qualified players in pass block grade at 60.9. He’s notoriously graded out better, posting a 70.8 mark a season ago and a 66.4 figure in 2023.
In fairness to Taylor, there is one silver lining. Among tackles with at least 50 snaps, he’s 13th in PFF’s pass blocking efficiency metric.
Chiefs Confident in Offensive Line Despite Early-Season Growing Pains
Reid continued his praise, applying it to the entire offensive line. His assessment of the Chiefs‘ recent performance up front was quite positive.
“I thought this past week was one of their better games,” Reid said. “I thought they came together there and did some good things, run game and pass.”
Advanced metrics aren’t as high on the quintet of Josh Simmons, Kingsley Suamataia, Creed Humphrey, Trey Smith and Taylor. PFF ranks Kansas City 14th in pass block grade and 24th in run block grade. ESPN’s rankings for team pass block win rate (17th) and run block win rate (30th) are even worse.
Quarterback Patrick Mahomes echoed the same sentiment as Reid, though. He says the offensive line allows him to be more comfortable and execute better within the offense. Week 3’s game against a tough New York Giants front was the club’s biggest test to date, and No. 15 says they passed.
“This last defensive line that we played had all type of first-rounders [and] all type of talent,” Mahomes said. “I thought the offensive line did a great job of giving me time to throw the ball down the field. My feet, you can tell, are a little bit more calm because I understand these guys can protect and they can give me time to make these throws. I’ll continue to get better and better at that and try to make some of these throws more accurate down the field. Instead of hitting 1-2 a game, making that 3-4 and 5-6, and then defenses will back up and it’ll help us out with other stuff within the offense.”
Should Taylor and company find more consistency, the future is bright for the offense in QB1’s eyes.
“I’m just excited for where this offense is going,” Mahomes said. “I know it hasn’t been the perfect product that we’ve put out there so far, but there’s a lot of good too.”
Andy Reid Drops Message on Jawaan Taylor’s Penalties & Chiefs’ O-Line