Chiefs WR Skyy Moore could be poised for a big season with Patrick Mahomes. Here’s why

At a glance, Chiefs receiver Skyy Moore is a touch heavier and more muscular than he was entering and during his rookie season.

“A little bit,” the second-year pro said, smiling and looking down at his left bicep after Wednesday’s minicamp practice. “Trying to.”

Even so, what really stood out was the lightness radiating from Moore.

And not because he’s now on the way to slimming back down, as he put it, from running back proportions to more of the receiver frame that was listed as 5-foot 10, 195 pounds last season.

It was all in the demeanor and even aura of Moore.

Which resonated all the more because he seldom, if ever, projected such ease during a first season spent largely gridlocked by the density of the Chiefs playbook — made all the more challenging while being asked to play multiple positions — and at times downcast over three fumbled punt returns.

Now, between his key postseason plays and growing ease and familiarity with the offense, Moore will tell you he’s ready for “just being myself,” becoming “a Chiefs receiver versus being, you know, ‘the rookie’ ” and to be further trusted by quarterback Patrick Mahomes.

“I just want to show him if you look this way you won’t be mad …,” Moore said. “You won’t regret it.”

So far, anyway, so good.

“Way different,” coach Andy Reid said.

Enough so that Moore had the most, or at least close to the most, receptions in preseason workouts. That, Reid added, was an indication of Mahomes’ increasing belief in Moore as Moore has come to better perceive all the hard-to-explain “little thing that Pat really wants.”

Asked if he had a stronger sense of connectivity with Moore now, Mahomes said, “100 percent” — reflected in days of practice that featured a highlight of Mahomes hitting Moore on a double move into a slant and calling out to him by his number: “Great route, 2-4!”

“I think you could see at the end of last year how he was kind of picking the stuff up and making big plays,” Mahomes said. “And I think that just kind of transitioned right into this season.”

Or at least into this offseason.

But that’s still a potentially meaningful step towards producing more and being more dependable next season.

And it’s a long way from where he was late in his first regular season, which he finished with just 22 catches for 250 yards and lugging the fumbles that became psychologically smothering.

So much so that Moore, who did not return punts in college at Western Michigan, was relieved when the Chiefs replaced him after his third gaffe in Week 13 against the Los Angeles Rams.

By then, he would later say, he had come to feel “I ain’t going” if they sent him back out, and that the results had “kind of put me down, made me feel different about myself.”

Happily enough, those words were spoken after the ultra-vindication of Moore’s vital 29-yard punt return with less than a minute left in the AFC Championship Game against Cincinnati.

With the score tied 20-20, Moore’s return to the Chiefs’ 47-yard-line paved the way to Harrison Butker’s game-winning field goal — capping a week that began with him as the fourth option for punt returns.

The duty only was left back in his hands because of injuries (Kadarius Toney and Mecole Hardman) and illness (Justin Watson).

That made for something almost poetic about the breakthrough for Moore, whose resilience Reid praised anew on Thursday.

“Redemption. That’s a redemption moment,” Chiefs special teams coordinator Dave Toub told Moore as they embraced that night, as seen by The Star’s Jesse Newell. “I told you you were going to get a big one.”

That helped spring the Chiefs to Super Bowl LVII, where Moore scored the first touchdown of his career in the fourth quarter of the 38-35 victory over Philadelphia.

A few things went awry on the 4-yard touchdown pass, but it’s telling that Moore was prepared to be right where he was supposed to be amid the chaos.

“Just film — Coach Reid, Coach EB (Eric Bieniemy) putting us in the right positions,” Moore said after the game.“So I just do what I’m told, and it worked out to perfection.”

Beyond the moment, too.

While they could be seen as just snapshots of a postseason with few touches for Moore, the late-season flashes gave him a feeling of emergence and traction he hadn’t had before.

“Last season I would say was definitely a roller-coaster for me just as far as my confidence level. And that definitely sent me off on a good high note,” he said Wednesday. “So I feel like on top of knowing what to correct and going off with the Super Bowl and everything we did last year, it was like the best way to go off.”

Into an offseason Moore said he’d been waiting for “because I knew what to correct.”

And collect more of the stuff that Mahomes reckons will give him a chance to really take off now.

“I knew I was working with champions as a rookie,” Moore said. “But now it’s, like, I am a champion. So I feel like I’ve molded myself into the culture that was set here.”