The Kansas City Chiefs are reuniting with former offensive coordinator Eric Bieniemy after a disappointing 2025 season that resulted in a major shakeup in the coaching staff.
Bieniemy’s 2025 season was the opposite: he was hired to coach the running backs for the Chicago Bears and first-year head coach Ben Johnson, who was the hottest name among offensive-minded candidates in last year’s coaching carousel. Chicago won the NFC North and beat the division-rival Green Bay Packers in the playoffs by leaning heavily on a top-10 offense.
While quarterback Caleb Williams proved capable of leading a high-powered unit, it was the rushing attack that drove the offense to be one of the NFL’s best. As a team, the Bears averaged the third-most rushing yards per attempt (4.9). Lead running back D’Andre Swift set a career high in rushing yards (1,087) and touchdowns (9).
However, the performance of rookie running back Kyle Monangai — a seventh-round pick — was the strongest example of Bieniemy’s influence. The downhill runner racked up 783 rushing yards in the regular season, averaging less than 10 attempts per game. He finished with the 24th-most rushing yards in the NFL, and the fifth-most among a productive class of backs.
His first breakout game was in Week 7, when he averaged 6.2 yards per carry and scored over 13 attempts. In the wake of that win, Monangai explained that Bieniemy’s coaching style resonated with him.
“I don’t try to see how I would fit a coach’s coach style. I kind of just receive the coach and how it’s taken,” Monangai said. “It just so happens the way he coaches is how I’ve been coached my whole life. Guys that demand a lot of you and maybe be a little vocal, as you guys get to hear on a daily basis. But yeah, he coaches as hard, he demands a lot out of us, but he does it because he knows we can do it. I think I respond to the way he coaches, and I just take everything he does and try to apply to my game and execute.”
In that same week, Monangai shared a coaching point from Bieniemy that hit home and was emphasized to all of the Chicago backfield.
“You’ll hear E.B. say all the time, ‘Find four and a half’ (yards per carry). He’s not too concerned with everything number-wise or big picture. He just says whatever play we’re on is the most important, and if the ball’s in your hand, you’ve got to find four and a half.”
Two weeks later, the rookie gashed the Cincinnati Bengals for 176 yards over 24 carries. A month after that, Monangai ran for 130 yards to help topple the Philadelphia Eagles on the road.
Since the upstart rookie played collegiately at Rutgers, the easy comparison has been the former seventh-round pick and starting running back of the Chiefs, Isiah Pacheco. However, Bieniemy pointed to another back in Kansas City when asked for a comparison.
“When I first had an opportunity to watch Kyle, he reminded me of someone, not myself,” Bieniemy said. “Reminds me of Kareem Hunt, and watching him and studying him on tape, going back to my days of reviewing tape on Kareem, those two are very, very similar. That’s the person that I see. Now, he has a lot to live up to because Kareem has had an outstanding career, but the kid takes a tremendous amount of pride in the little things, so that’s important. Now we just got to continue to grow.”
Hunt was a third-round pick in the 2017 NFL Draft, leading the NFL in rushing as a rookie with Bieniemy as his position coach.
With Bieniemy now focusing on getting the most out of the Chiefs’ backfield, Monangai’s rookie rushing total puts the offense’s subpar 2025 season into perspective: 783 rushing yards — the second-most on the Bears — would have led Kansas City in each of the last two years.
There is plenty of hands-on coaching needed across the Chiefs’ offense for the coordinator. However, the run game needs to be especially sharpened. The scheme and playcalling factor into that improvement, but Bieniemy’s ability to get the most out of an individual may factor in as well. Monangai responded to his coaching by dramatically outplaying his 233rd overall selection.
