The NFL offseason is off to the races with the legal tampering period officially underway. Headlining the flurry of news was the report that reigning Super Bowl MVP Kenneth Walker III will be signing with the Kansas City Chiefs. The reported terms of the deal are three years and $45 million.
This is a notable change in outlook for last year’s Super Bowl champion Seattle Seahawks and the Kansas City Chiefs, who have been to five of the past seven Super Bowls themselves.
Kenneth Walker III Fantasy Football Outlook with the Chiefs:
Kenneth Walker III is coming off a stellar season in which he rushed for 1,027 yards, tallied 282 receiving yards and scored five touchdowns across the regular season. He carried this into the playoffs, recording 313 rushing yards and four touchdowns across the three postseason games, also adding 104 receiving yards. Following Zach Charbonnet’s torn ACL in the opening playoff matchup, Walker stepped up as the featured running back and earned Super Bowl MVP in the process.
From a fantasy football perspective, Walker finished last season with 11.6 average fantasy points per game based on DraftKings scoring. This ranked 28th among running backs. It was also a drop-off in last year’s production, when Walker averaged 16.7 fantasy points per game on DraftKings scoring.
Looking at the postseason production, Walker averaged 26.9 fantasy points per game. This led all running backs in the playoffs, and would have led all RBs if he had sustained this over the course of the regular season.
He will now join Patrick Mahomes in the Chiefs’ backfield, where he will look to build off this level of production as he heads into his age-26 season.
While the Chiefs have had plenty of team success over the past few seasons, production in the running game has not been a major part of this. Starting with last year and looking over the past few seasons, Kansas City has ranked 25th, 22nd, 19th, 20th, 16th, 16th, 23rd and 16th in rushing yards going back to the 2018 season.
Kansas City has largely leaned on a revolving door of running back options, with Isiah Pacheco and Kareem Hunt the two most frequent faces. Last season, Hunt led the team with 611 rushing yards and eight touchdowns, while Pacheco added 462 yards on the ground and a touchdown of his own.
Walker will be an improved caliber of talent in the backfield and has the potential to take this Chiefs offense to new heights. Kansas City went just 6-11 last season, which marked its worst regular season record since 2012 and the first time it missed the playoffs since 2014. Patrick Mahomes remains the headline of the conversation for the best quarterback in football, but the Chiefs have seemingly pushed the belief that he can elevate any skill position player around him and they paid the price for this. As Mahomes recovers from his ACL tear, expect Walker to be a key part of the attack when he returns.
Walker was largely projected around an ADP of 15 among running backs before this signing. It is not a massive surprise to see him leave Seattle, given the contractual tension that built up to this point. However, Kansas City is right near the top of his best possible landing spots.
Even with Kansas City set to remain committed to its pass-first style, expect Walker to play a significant role in its offensive attack moving forward. Andy Reid has a strong track record for maximizing the skillsets of his players, and Walker provides a higher caliber of talent than has been the case in the backfield for several seasons.
The reigning Super Bowl MVP will not quite crack the list of first-round locks or the true top running backs from a fantasy football perspective. But expect his draft range to shift from a third/fourth round to earning some second round buzz. There is still plenty to go down in the NFL this offseason as rosters get settled, but count on the addition of Walker III to have some major effects both on the field and from a fantasy football perspective.
