KANSAS CITY, Mo. — The Chiefs acquired a player Monday they hope they never actually need.

QB2.

The Jets traded Justin Fields to the Chiefs for a 2027 sixth-round pick, sources confirmed to The Kansas City Star. The Jets will be paying the bulk of his salary, a rapid fall of stature for a quarterback anointed the Week 1 starter in New York a year ago.

On to Kansas City. And on to a much different role.

Fields, who has started 53 games over the past five seasons, will serve as the backup to Patrick Mahomes. Fields might get the bulk of the starter’s work over the summer as Mahomes works his way back from knee surgery, but the best-case scenario leaves him on the bench for the regular season.

With maybe one exception.

Can he help the Chiefs in short yardage?

Last season, the Chiefs were the second-best short-yardage team in the NFL. They converted 71.8% of their third- and fourth-and-short plays into first downs, a rate that trailed only the New York Giants.

But there’s a reason behind that high conversion rate, and that reason isn’t currently on the roster: Kareem Hunt. He converted 34 of 40 short-yardage plays (85%) into first downs. That’s twice as many first downs as any other running back in the league. Without Hunt, the Chiefs converted just 57.9% of short-yardage attempts, which would have ranked 25th in the NFL.

It’s a need.

Hunt will turn 31 before the season and remains a free agent. His success on short yardage was so good — and the difference without him so drastic — that the Chiefs might still find some value in breaking him back at the veteran minimum, even if it’s not exactly a desirable age for a running back. Hunt finished sixth among all NFL running backs last year in EPA (expected points added), per FTN’s data.

That’s how much this topic matters, and the Chiefs don’t yet have a replacement on the roster.

Or do they?

During this free-agency window, the Chiefs have added a player who was quite successful in short-yardage situations a year ago. And it’s not new high-priced running back Kenneth Walker.

It’s Fields.

In just nine starts a year ago — only nine because the passing game wasn’t pretty — Fields rushed 14 times on third- or fourth-and-short. He converted 12 of them into first downs. That’s 85.7%, an ever-so-slightly higher clip than Hunt.

That’s also 1.33 first downs on short-yardage attempts per start, the most among all quarterbacks in the NFL. The success rate of 85.7% ranked sixth among quarterbacks.

Fields also ran eight QB sneaks in 2025 — a play absent from the Chiefs playbook since Mahomes dislocated his kneecap on a sneak in 2019 — and converted seven of them. The Chiefs probably won’t decide that the heels of offseason knee surgery is the best time to reintroduce the quarterback sneak into the playbook.

But they could do it with another player — if they want to use him.

This isn’t the first time I have suggested this, because Fields isn’t the first Chiefs backup quarterback suitable for this role. Carson Wentz was one of the most successful quarterback-sneak players in the league, and the Chiefs still didn’t use him.

There might not be a lot of optimism, in other words. And look, it’s not as though the reticence is unfounded — taking Patrick Mahomes off the field on the most critical downs of the game is a tough sell.

With Mahomes, they keep one of the most successful players on the field — but they also remove one of the most successful plays from the equation.

The Chiefs were one of just three teams not to attempt a quarterback sneak a year ago. Half the league attempted at least 10 of them, and all of those teams combined for a success rate of 76.2%. It is the best short-yardage play in football. (As an aside, because I’m certainly not arguing the correlation equals causation here, but the eight teams with the most attempts all made the playoffs.)

Fields would give the Chiefs a chance to return the play to the playbook. But he’s more than that.

There’s a reason he was the No. 11 overall pick in the 2021 NFL draft. He ran a 4.44 40-yard dash. His speed is a real weapon. Not all of his short-yardage success came from sneaks — several came from designed QB runs.

And the threat of his speed also puts the speed of the running back into play. A year ago, Breece Hall attempted 16 short-yardage rushes for the Jets — nine in the games started by Fields and seven after Fields was benched for the year.

In the nine short-yardage carries with Fields, Hall ran for 48 yards (5.3 per carry) and a touchdown. In the seven attempts without him, he ran for 15 yards (2.1 yards per carry). A small sample size, sure.

The Jets were terrible, and the Fields-led passing game was one of the reasons why.

But this is the one spot in which their offense was effective, and he’s just as responsible for that.

The ideal scenario for the Chiefs is they don’t need his arm, because they don’t have to worry about Mahomes’ knee.

But they could still use his legs.

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