Super Bowl MVP running back Kenneth Walker III and the Kansas City Chiefs have agreed to a three-year free-agent contract worth up to $45 million, including $28.7 million guaranteed, league sources told The Athletic.

With free agency looming, Walker couldn’t have picked a better time to hit his stride than during the Seattle Seahawks playoff run. In three postseason games, he recorded 417 scrimmage yards and four touchdowns, capping it with a 161-yard performance in the Seahawks’ Super Bowl victory over the New England Patriots that earned him the MVP trophy. He also played in all 17 regular-season games for the first time in 2025, after various injuries caused him to miss time in his first three seasons.

Against the San Francisco 49ers in the divisional round, Walker had 19 carries for 116 yards and scored a career-high three touchdowns while adding another three catches and 29 yards receiving. In Super Bowl LX, Walker became the first running back to win MVP since the Denver Broncos’ Terrell Davis did it in Super Bowl 32 following the 1997 season.

Walker, 25, was the top-ranked running back and seventh-best free agent in The Athletic’s top 150. The Seahawks selected him in the second round of the 2022 NFL Draft out of Michigan State.

How he fits

Walker gives the Chiefs what they’ve desperately needed from their running game: some big-play ability. Per TruMedia, Walker had 10 20-plus-yard runs last season. Meanwhile, the entire Chiefs running-back room combined for just one.

Even Chiefs coach Andy Reid, who usually stays vanilla with his public comments, acknowledged he wanted to see more from Chiefs running backs next year.

“Somewhere, you’d like to have a few bigger plays in that area,” he said after the season. “Not 3-4 yards. Every once in a while, you need to hit on a few.”

Walker adds immediate juice to a running game that needed an offseason overhaul.

2026 roster impact

Walker will be the immediate lead back for the Chiefs, who will still need to add more to the position this offseason. Second-year player Brashard Smith is more of a running back-receiver hybrid, while Isiah Pacheco and Kareem Hunt — the team’s two primary backs from 2024 and 2025 — are pending free agents. The Chiefs did not use a mid-round draft pick for a running back as they planned last season, but they could give it another try this year with one of their nine current selections.

Salary-cap update

The Chiefs have cleared some recent cap room by cutting right tackle Jawaan Taylor and trading cornerback Trent McDuffie to the Los Angeles Rams. They aren’t flush with cash, but those maneuvers did help them bid at the top of the running-back market, which was the most obvious and glaring need following last season’s disappointing 6-11 campaign. General manager Brett Veach has more levers he can pull with restructured contracts, meaning K.C. could still find itself looking for defensive linemen and receivers during free agency.

Jesse Newell’s takeaway

The Chiefs didn’t waste any time knocking out their No. 1 free-agency need. Veach loves to clear his team’s base needs during this time, so he’s not pigeonholed into taking a certain position early in the draft, and Walker’s addition makes it so the Chiefs can wait on a running back in the draft while not having to be forced into a Jeremiyah-Love-or-bust mode. This move also aligns with a change coming to the Chiefs offense in 2026, with the team looking to get back to a more downhill running style behind a physical interior three on the offensive line of Kingsley Suamataia, Creed Humphrey and Trey Smith.

— The Athletic’s Jeff Howe and Dianna Russini contributed to this report.