The Kansas City Chiefs needed a cornerback, but they gave up far to much to get him in their draft-day trade.
The Kansas City Chiefs supposedly got the player they wanted, but it took a trade to do it. The Chiefs gave up a lot of draft capital to jump from No. 9 to No. 6, and some media evaluators weren’t impressed at all that they had to give up third- and fifth-round picks to get corner back Mansoor Delane of LSU.
Specifically, the trade grade was a D+, and it was given by Seth Walder of ESPN, who said the deal comes out even on the old Jimmy Johnson chart that attaches a value to each pick. Walder’s counter, though was ESPN’s Approximate Value-based draft pick valuations, which are based on how players at each draft slot actually perform, according to the writer.
Based on that in-house metric, the Chiefs executed a larger-than-average overpay for a first-round, non-quarterback trade up.
Going beyond those metrics, there are two levels that makes this a bad trade. One is that there’s a good chance that Delane would have fallen to No. 9, so the Chiefs would have been able to select him without giving up any draft capital. ESPN’s Draft Day Predictor gave Delane a 90 percent chance to make it to the ninth pick, which means the Chiefs just surrendered two draft picks for nothing.
That goes counter to Brett Veach’s comments after the draft, though. According to the Chiefs GM, the Washington Commanders would have drafted Delane ahead of Kansas City, but it will be a very long time before we know if that was actually the case.
What we do know is that this pick contradicts everything the Chiefs have put out for the last two months about the positions where they need help. That’s the second level of this deal, and it raises questions about whether the Chiefs were just putting out pre-draft fog or wether the draft board suddenly shifted beneath them to the point where taking Delane became a necessity.
Finally, this pick raises questions about the Chiefs’ existing options in the secondary, their in-house evaluations and the secondary players the Chiefs signed in free agency. Did Kansas City miss on those players, or was there just more fog about how some of these guys were ready to step up.
For the Browns, though, the grade here was obvious. They got an A- for adding two more picks and still getting Utah offensive tackle Spencer Fano, who was one of the highest-rated tackles in the draft.