KANSAS CITY, Mo. — The first five games of the Kansas City Chiefs’ 2014 season were interesting to watch, especially when it came to figuring out just what the team’s offense is doing each week.

Just where Andy Reid takes that side of the ball in the last 11 games will paint the picture of whether the Chiefs are a contender or a pretender.

It is apparent after five games that the Kansas City offense does not yet have a consistent personality.

Part of that is the result of injuries that shuffled the offensive line at the start of the season. Another factor is the emergence of several playmaking threats that are new weapons for Reid and his offensive staff. The Chiefs also played an early schedule with three road games and against three top 10 defenses.

Whatever the reasons, in five games the offense has been all over the road:

— The offense scored only nine touchdowns in victories over Miami (5) and New England (4). Against San Francisco, Kansas City reached the end zone just twice. In losing the opener to Tennessee, the Chiefs scored just one touchdown. The Titans have not won a game since then and have given up 14 touchdowns in the last four games.

— Second-year tight end Travis Kelce was targeted nine times against New England in a Monday night victory. He caught eight passes for 93 yards and a touchdown. Six days later against San Francisco, Kelce was targeted just three times, catching two passes for 15 yards and a touchdown.

— Second-year running back Knile Davis in back-to-back games against Miami and New England ran 48 times for 239 yards. But in the San Francisco game, Davis had two carries for 6 yards.

— The wide receivers have not caught a touchdown pass in five games. As close as they came was the 17-yard scoring throw caught by rookie De’Anthony Thomas, who the team lists as a running back.

— In five games, the most targeted receiver has been a different player in each game, and those five names have not included running back Jamaal Charles, last year’s leading receiver, or the club’s No. 1 wide receiver Dwayne Bowe. Alex Smith’s favorite targets in the first five games have been wide receiver Donnie Avery, Davis, running back Joe McKnight, Kelce and tight end Anthony Fasano.

— Running back Jamaal Charles missed three quarters of the game in Denver and then the next week’s game against Miami. But otherwise he has supposedly been healthy. He has just 51 touches for 238 yards and three touchdowns. If he maintains that average, he will have just 163 touches for the season after he led the team in rushing and receiving last year with 329 runs and catches.

— The team’s highly paid wide receiver, Dwayne Bowe, has barely shown up on the offensive radar screen. After sitting out the season opener because of a one-game suspension, Bowe in four games has 14 catches for 195 yards, an average game production of 3.5 catches for 49 yards. If he maintains that pace, it will be the least productive season of his career.

— Last season, Smith threw seven interceptions in 15 starts. This year, he already has thrown four.

In five games, the Chiefs played against good NFL defenses with four of the opponents ranked in the top half of the league in fewest yards allowed: San Francisco (2), New England (4), Miami (7) and Denver (14).

Reid says he wants to run a balanced offense, but he defines that as 60 percent pass, 40 percent run. So far, they are 54 percent pass, 46 percent run. In their two victories over Miami and New England, they were a combined 58 percent run, 42 percent pass.

The Chiefs’ numbers in the specialty areas on offense are good, converting 50.8 percent of third-down opportunities, scoring 70.6 percent of the time they reach the opponent’s 20-yard line. But two of the three losses could have been reversed by more clutch offensive play in the second half and specifically the fourth quarter. In losing to Denver and San Francisco, they were unable to maintain drives, convert third downs or score when they did have the chance.

“Given the opportunities when you have the football in your hand from an offensive standpoint, you’ve got to sustain drives. In particular, as you get into that latter part of the third quarter and fourth quarter there, you’ve got to make sure that when you’ve got the ball, you keep the ball and you keep your drives going,” Reid said. “That’s where some of our execution can be better right there. And like I said, we’re going to get that thing right as we go down the stretch here.”

The Chiefs expected some offensive problems with a shuffled line, where three starters from last season were gone through free agency.

A lack of consistency was made worse when they had to reshuffle for the opener when starting right tackle Donald Stephenson was suspended for four games. But of late, the line has improved, and the Chiefs are ranked No. 8 in rushing yards and the pass protection numbers are about the same as last season.

Reid runs an opponent-driven game plan, changing from week to week. Sometimes those decisions work, other times not so much.

“The challenge for us as coaches is to try and make sure that we are in different personnel groupings and different formations, yet we don’t keep it too complicated for the players to where they don’t know where to line up and they don’t know what route to run and we don’t know what progression to go to,” quarterbacks coach Mike Nagy said. “You see from Week No. 1 against Tennessee to where we are now, we are doing a lot more stuff. The guys are becoming more comfortable and understanding where we’re putting them and then they’re making plays.”

The lack of consistency may be traced to trying to do too much stuff. Some of the key players on offense that the Chiefs hope to get contributions from, like Davis, Kelce and Thomas, are still youngsters in the league.

“There is a fine line with creativity because with creativity becomes new, and it becomes something your offense is not,” offensive coordinator Doug Pederson said. “We’ve logged a lot of hours through training camp and through the first five games on plays that guys are familiar with, and we want to continue to utilize those concepts; just put different guys in those positions to run the same plays.

“The more we can move them around with schemes and concepts that the guys know, the more efficient we can become as an offense.”