The Kansas City Chiefs have not put too much emphasis on the ground game during the Patrick Mahomes era.

As a matter of fact, the last time the Chiefs boasted a 1,000-yard rusher was back in 2017, when Kareem Hunt rattled off a league-leading 1,327 yards with Alex Smith under center.

When the Chiefs won their first Super Bowl with Mahomes during the 2019-20 campaign, Damien Williams was their top rusher with 498 yards. Last year, Isiah Pacheco paced Kansas City with 835 yards on the ground in its run to another championship.

So you wouldn’t naturally expect the Chiefs to show much interest in a star running back.

But Jeremy Fowler of ESPN thinks they should buck their recent trend.

Fowler suggests that Kansas City should take advantage of Jonathan Taylor’s displeasure with the Indianapolis Colts, proposing that the Chiefs offer fellow halfback Clyde Edwards-Helaire and a 2024 fourth-round draft pick to the Colts in exchange for Taylor.

While Mahomes and Co. have been able to get by without an elite running back in previous years, this season is a bit different.

The Chiefs are actually very thin in terms of offensive weapons, and it’s showing early on. Kansas City has amassed a grand total of 37 points in their 1-1 start to the season, most recently scoring just 17 in an eight-point win over the Jacksonville Jaguars.

Kansas City lost wide receivers JuJu Smith-Schuster and Mecole Hardman back in the spring, leaving the club with a whole lot of unproven talent in the aerial attack outside of tight end Travis Kelce. Couple that with the fact that the Chiefs don’t have an elite rusher in the backfield, and it could certainly cause some problems for the team the rest of the season.

Swinging a deal for Taylor, who made the Pro Bowl in 2021, would definitely take a whole lot of pressure off of Mahomes and head coach Andy Reid.