The 2026 NFL season will soon be underway for the Kansas City Chiefs.

Kansas City has to wait until Monday Night Football, the last game of Week 1, to face the Denver Broncos. Practice will begin Thursday, Sept. 10, as the team starts preparing for the Broncos and the rest of its opponents in the 2026 NFL season.

Each year, players prove more important to a team’s success than anyone realizes at the start of the season. Here, I’m going to do my best to predict who some of those players might be for the Kansas City Chiefs during the 2026 campaign.

TE Noah Gray

Gray is coming off what has perhaps been his worst season as a professional. During the 2024 season, he was about as reliable a receiving target as you could get. Then he experienced what can only be described as a regression to the mean in dropped passes and his success as a receiving threat. In some ways, his season mirrored the team’s.

Gray’s importance to the offense, however, doesn’t have anything to do with his ability to bounce back as a pass catcher. Though that would be an added bonus. Where the Chiefs need Gray to step up in a big way as the team’s primary inline blocking tight end. Kansas City doesn’t have a prototypical blocking tight end on the roster.

They know that Travis Kelce can do it, but what they really need is for Gray to step up and play that role to the best of his ability. That’s especially true in the running game and as an inline blocker to help at offensive tackle. The Chiefs will need help with a revamped offensive attack built around a dynamic, strong running game. With that, you need a tight end who can block. Gray seems earmarked for this role in Kansas City.

WR Tyquan Thornton

As much as the talk has been about Xavier Worthy bouncing back from his poor 2025 NFL season and Rashee Rice getting back to being a productive wide receiver after off-field struggles and injury, the wide receiver I believe will quietly be one of the most important is Tyquan Thornton. He had flashes early last season with the Kansas City Chiefs when Worthy was injured and Rice was suspended, building legitimate chemistry with Patrick Mahomes. As the season progressed and players returned from injury and suspension, Thornton’s role shrank to almost nothing.

Now he has a chance to carve out a role for himself as a legitimate first-string wide receiver option in Kansas City and put that chemistry he built with Mahomes to the test. Specifically, I’m looking to see his ability to compete and make plays in the short and intermediate passing game, not just the deep passing game. I also think Thornton can quietly be one of the team’s most versatile receiving weapons. One thing that hasn’t quite shown up in his game yet is his ability to block and spring other players. He has the size and frame to do that at a high clip alongside players like Rice and Jalen Royals, potentially blocking for players like Worthy and Cyrus Allen. The Chiefs just need Thornton to be what he can be, based on those opportunities in the early goings of last season.

S Jaden Hicks

Hicks is another player looking to bounce back after a poor 2025 season. He has been one of the stars of the Chiefs’ preseason, making plays all over the defensive secondary. He’s been filling in for Chammari Conner, who is “a stretch” to play in Week 1. That absence gives a player like Hicks an opportunity to establish himself as a communicator and playmaker in the Chiefs’ secondary.

If Hicks can establish that alongside Alohi Gilman and Chris Roland-Wallace, perhaps the team will think twice when Conner is healthy. What he seems to excel most at is when he has the ability to trigger downhill and attack the ball and the play in front of him. I’d also like to see more of the playmaking we saw in his rookie campaign, when he recorded three interceptions for Kansas City.

DE Felix Anudike-Uzomah

There’s no doubt that the first three seasons of Anudike-Uzomah’s career with the Chiefs have been forgettable. I think what we saw in the preseason is that he is prepared to put those behind him and go out and earn a second contract in Kansas City or elsewhere. He’s not only going to be used as an edge rusher for the Chiefs this season. He was also one of the players to consistently line up as a 3-technique in the team’s NASCAR looks. He’s got the burst and power to cause problems for interior offensive linemen, and he looked much improved when it comes to his timing off the snap and getting after the quarterback.

Am I expecting him to go out there and be a 10-sack guy this season? That’s probably unrealistic, and I don’t know he’ll get enough snaps to have that level of impact. I don’t think it’s unreasonable to say that this year he has the potential to make his biggest impact yet, one that could be game-changing. When you combine his ability with players like R Mason Thomas and newcomer Jack Pyburn, the Chiefs have a much more dynamic group of pass rushers than they did a season ago.

LB Drue Tranquill

I’ve admittedly been quite down on the Chiefs’ linebacker room this year. I don’t think it’s particularly deep, and I don’t think it’s as talented as it could be. I do think, however, that Drue Tranquill could be a big part of the team’s ability to overcome that. When you look at the energy he brings to the defensive side of the ball during training camp and those practice sessions, he has really emerged as a leader on this defense alongside green dot Nick Bolton.

Tranquill can still be a playmaker as a coverage linebacker, but he also has the ability to set the tone versus the run and make some of those savvy veteran plays that you frankly just need to have made at the linebacker position. Hopefully his back injury does not linger throughout the season. He has dealt with back injuries in the past in Kansas City, and they has even kept him out of games. If he could stay healthy, Tranquill can be a significant part of what Kansas City looks to do on the defensive side of the ball: start fast with a group comprised largely of new players but anchored by a strong foundational core with guys like Tranquill, Bolton, L’Jarius Sneed, Chris Jones, and others who have been around this defense for several years.

C Hunter Nourzad

Nourzad had a near-flawless preseason showing with the Chiefs. According to PFF, he allowed no QB Pressures on 88 pass-blocking snaps. His run-blocking grade was equally spotless. He has all the makings of a good backup interior offensive lineman, and could actually be what the team has been missing since Nick Allegretti left.

I don’t know if he’ll get many opportunities to fill in on the offensive interior. The team traded for Joshua Ezeudu, and Mike Caliendo is still on the roster. What I do know is that Nourzad will likely be used on the jumbo sets with an extra offensive lineman. Kansas City should be using those plays with greater frequency now that they’ve got Kenneth Walker and Emmett Johnson in the backfield.