New Year. New Bieniemy. New Offense?

Part 1 of a series looking at what the Chiefs new, returning OC can bring to the 2026 Chiefs' Offense with improved RB play on Wide Zone run concepts.

The Kansas City Chiefs have moved on from their two-time Offensive Coordinator, Matt Nagy, and brought back ex-Offensive Coordinator Eric Bieniemy. Bieniemy had been the OC in Kansas City during some of their offensive “glory years” from 2018 to 2022 before heading out to be the play-calling OC for the Washington Commanders. After a single season there, he popped down to the collegiate level, where he kept the same role for the UCLA Bruins. After one year at UCLA, Bieniemy made his way back to the NFL with the Chicago Bears as the running backs coach in 2025.

We are long past breaking down the hiring of Eric Bieniemy and his successes or failures at previous jobs. It’s now time to look ahead at what he may bring to the Chiefs’ offense that has had a tumultuous two seasons. This will ultimately be a series of articles over the next few weeks outlining new or repurposed ideas that Bieniemy may be adding to the fold.

As a coach, Bieniemy is deeply rooted in Andy Reid’s image — see his offensive scheme work, not production, at his OC stops — but that doesn’t mean he can’t add something the Chiefs have been missing. This likely doesn’t come with wholesale changes but rather refinement and tweaking of the current system in place. For those reasons, this series will be mostly grounded in what the Chicago Bears’ offense was doing in 2025 and which parts of that make sense to try to borrow from for the Chiefs.

Without further ado, let’s jump into the film and see where Eric Bieniemy may be able to boost the Chiefs’ offense.

What Bieniemy Can Bring: Improved Wide Zone

The general infrastructure of the Chiefs' and Bears' offenses is quite different. It’s not conducive to simply say “Let’s transfer over all of this good in place of all of this bad”, however, we can find some throughlines that can be directly tied to Bieniemy as a running backs coach that also make sense for the Chiefs. The first place to start is with the Chiefs’ most common, staple run play, the Wide Zone. In part one of this entire series, we are going to focus entirely on the Wide Zone, specifically the running back on this play.

The Chiefs’ most commonly called run concept last season was an “outside” zone play with 136 total attempts. I used quotes here because there are two main variations of this zone run in this category: true Outside Zone and Wide Zone. The difference can look minor, but it changes the entire goal of the play.

Wide Zone vs Outside Zone

Wide Zone is an under-center run in which the running back’s aiming point is between the outside leg of the offensive tackle and the midline of an attached tight end. The general goal is to create lateral displacement of the defensive line to create vertical gaps for a running back to cut upfield, but not necessarily to seal the edge and run outside of the box.

Outside Zone is a shotgun run in which the running back’s aiming point is typically between the midline and the outside leg of a second tight end — note in either variation the tight ends do not have to be present, it’s just a marker for where the RB is starting their path — with the goal to create the same lateral displacement of the defensive line. It’s far more common for this run to get outside of the box, and you often see the furthest outside blocker work to hook the end man on the line of scrimmage of the defense.

For the running back, the footwork and pacing are generally the same (more on this later), but the aiming point and therefore rush lanes differ. On Outsize Zone, the wider, flatter angle of the RB limits how likely cuts to the “backside” of the offensive line will be. On Inside Zone, the sharper, more direct pathing opens up the ability to cut behind the backside of the line scrimmage, but does limit how often it can truly be run outside.

Where Is This Going?

Fair question. We established earlier that the Chiefs love their “outside” zone runs. In fact, 41% of their run plays were a version of an outside zone run play. Of their 136 outside run concepts, 68% were Wide Zone, but they only averaged -0.198 EPA/play on them — their Outside Zone runs were less frequent and even less efficient.

Now let’s switch over to Eric Bieniemy and the Chicago Bears. The Bears’ main run concept was also a version of an outside zone run. In fact, 47% of their runs were of this nature, with 166 of 189 of them being on Wide Zone from under center. On their Wide Zone runs, the Bears averaged +0.126 EPA/play.

So both teams like to major in the same run concept, but while the Chiefs like to dabble with multiple variations of it, the Bears stayed more steady. The results plainly show that the Bears were much more efficient on their Wide Zone run attempts, which leaves the questions: “Why” and “Can Bieniemy help close the gap”? This week, we will answer those two questions from the running back’s perspective and focus on where improvement can be found at the position group he coached in Chicago.

RB Footwork and Aiming Point

Here we have two similar weak Wide Zone runs for each team. Conveniently, two major differences jumped out right away when watching the two teams run this play that seem directly related to the running backs. First is the aiming point. Second is when and how the runner makes their upfield cut. Both of these things could certainly be a direct talent-related issue or could be a coaching emphasis-related issue.