Andy Reid gives update on Chiefs' backup QB battle

The Kansas City Chiefs are in the midst of a heated quarterback competition. Unlike some other teams, the Chiefs’ competition isn’t for the top job, but for the role of Patrick Mahomes‘ backup.

Third-year quarterback Shane Buechele is battling it out with veteran Blaine Gabbert, and the two are “real close,” according to the Chiefs’ head coach.

“Those two are real close, they’re real close in there,” Andy Reid said on Monday, via Matt Derrick of ChiefsDigest.com. “So they’re competing, just let it play out here, see how it goes. It’s good competition.”

With one more game to go in the preseason, time is ticking for the Chiefs to make a decision. Looking at the numbers, Buechele has had the bulk of the passing attempts, but both quarterbacks have found the endzone.

In the first two games, Buechele went 21-of-28 for 260 yards with two touchdowns and an interception. Meanwhile, Gabbert went 11-of-16 for 179 yards with three touchdowns.

Regardless of which quarterback wins the competition, the Chiefs could opt to keep both on the roster. Thanks to a new NFL rule, they can even activate a third quarterback for gamedays if they need to.

NFL approves emergency third quarterback for 2023

Through two seasons in the league, Buechele has no stats in regular season games. The Texas-turned-SMU quarterback can finally get in the action if he wins the second-team job behind Mahomes. The league MVP’s backup last season, Chad Henne, had just two pass attempts during the regular season but he did help out in the postseason in both 2020 and 2022.

The Chiefs brought Gabbert in as a free-agent pickup in April. He signed a one-year deal for $1.3 million. Last season, he played for the Tampa Bay Buccaneers behind Tom Brady. He appeared in one regular season game, completing 6-of-8 passes for 29 yards and a touchdown.

The former first-round draft pick for the Jacksonville Jaguars now has stats with five different teams. The Jaguars, the 49ers, Cardinals, Titans and Bucs have all leaned on Gabbert as a backup after he fizzled as a starter.

The NFL owners approved a rule change at spring meetings that allows teams an emergency third quarterback that they can activate from the inactive list during the game if the two available quarterbacks are injured or ejected.

As a part of the rule change, if either of the first two quarterbacks is cleared to return to action by the medical team, the emergency third quarterback must leave the game.

Another stipulation to the rule is that if a team has three active quarterbacks at the start of the game, it wouldn’t be able to activate an emergency third quarterback.

The designation of who is the emergency quarterback must be made when the team decides their active and inactive lists 90 minutes before kickoff.

On3’s Peter Warren contributed to this report.