The strength of the secondary in Kansas City during their Super Bowl run was with their safeties. DB’s Charvarius Ward and Bashuad Breeland played well enough to get the job done, but many thought General Manager Brett Veach would be looking for an upgrade at CB going into the 2020 season. That thought, however, did not come to fruition.
Bashaud Breeland, after a very long wait, would eventually be resigned by Kansas City. While many people were excited about bringing him back, their excitement would be short lived. Breeland had an incident with the police and it then came out that he was already going to be suspended for the first four games of the 2020 season because of a violation of the league’s substance abuse policy.
Breeland’s availability and status for the 2020 season seems to be very much in the air at this point, which would leave a very big hole at the CB position opposite Ward.
It seemed certain that CB was going to be a priority in the NFL draft, but the first three picks in the draft came and went and not a corner was selected.
It was not until the fourth round that Kansas City selected L’ Jarius Sneed of Louisiana Tech. They also traded back into the seventh round to select CB Thakarius “BoPete” Keyes out of Tulane.
The Chiefs also went on to add three UDFA CBs to their roster. Jarvaris Dais, Lavert Hill, and Hakeem Bailey. Davis was the highest rated UDFA CB according to NFL.com. He doesn’t have great size at only 5 feet 8 inches and 183 pounds, but he can fly. He ran a 4.39 and also had a great broad jump at 124 inches.
The only other newcomer via free agency to Kansas City is Antonio Hamilton, who was previously with the New York Giants. Most of Hamilton’s experience comes from his time as a special teams ace.
Alex Brown and Rashad Fenton are two returners that could carve out a role for themselves in 2020. Fenton was already seeing some playing time last year. His development will be critical this year.
As you can see the Chiefs certainly have options at the corner position. It is a matter whether or not they can develop these players to a point where they have two or three guys they have that can play opposite Ward and in nickel situations.
Without having invested significant capital, draft picks, or free agent dollars, it was very smart of Veach to take multiple swings at the position in the draft and at free agency. Hopefully, by bringing in a variety of players they will be able to find one of them that sticks.
There is a still a lot of time before the season as well and Brett Veach has shown that he will continue to overturn their roster until he feels it is in the best place possible.
The Chiefs will move forward with this group of no name corners and Coach Spagnuolo’s defense will continue to lean on the strength of their safeties. As long as the play can be as good as last year, there is no doubt they can run it back in 2020.