The Kansas City Chiefs have made intriguing moves on both sides of the ball, and these comments clarify their moves.
If you’re an NFL fan trying to get good intel about what your favorite team is doing, this can be a tough time of year. Between the combine, the spring meetings and the pre-draft noise, it can be nearly impossible to figure out exactly what’s going on.
The Chiefs are right in the middle of this sort of thing, especially after making the dramatic moves of adding running back Kenneth Walker III and trading for quarterback Justin Fields to fill in at quarterback while Patrick Mahomes continues his rehab. But Mike Sando of The Athletic put together a fascinating piece that contains anonymous comments on each team’s offseason moves, and they definitely help cut through the fog.
The initial comment was about the Walker/Fields combination, and it was revealing, to say the least.
“I think it points to, ‘OK, let’s survive the early part of the season,’” an exec said. “I bet they just run the tread off Justin. It will be a lot of RPO. And they maybe get Walker involved in the passing game so that he can continue to be a two-phase player when Mahomes comes back.”
The Walker move was about revamping the running game, and it was made largely because the Chiefs ranked 30th in the league last season in yards per carry, and 32nd in the rate of rushes that gained at least 12 yards when that yardage level was available.
“If Mahomes keeps on going up against five- and six-man boxes, he can only do so much,” another exec said. “They need that run threat.”
On defense, the comments Sando supplied were mostly about the massive changes in the Chiefs secondary. Kansas City traded cornerback Trent McDuffie to the Los Angeles Rams for draft capital, and they let free-agent cornerback Jaylen Watson follow McDuffie to the Rams while allowing safety Bryan Cook to sign with the Cincinnati Bengals.
“They got their picks back that they spent to get McDuffie, so it is a net zero, and they won two Super Bowls with him in the meantime,” one exec said to summarize the moves.
The future in the secondary is still a bit murky, though. The Chiefs have signed safety Alohi Gilman to bolster their deep coverage, and they’ve also added cornerbacks Kader Kohou and Taron Johnson. Another executive said that points to what longtime defensive coordinator Steve Spagnuolo wants to do this season.
“They are banking on (defensive coordinator) Steve Spagnuolo and the defensive scheme,” another exec said. “It looks like Spags saying, ‘Just get me some guys, we’ll be fine.’”