Stanford Routt On Signing With Chiefs

The Kansas City Chiefs made a pre-free agency splash yesterday by signing the best free agent currently available in former Raiders CB Stanford Routt.

The news sent shock waves through the NFL for a number of reasons. For one, it has cause many around the league to assume that Chiefs CB Brandon Carr will hit the free agent market and that WR Dwayne Bowe will be re-signed or franchised, thus tightening the WR market.

In the end, however, we don’t know how this situation is going to play out. What we do know is that Routt is a Chief and that he chose KC over plenty of other interested parties. He spoke recently with ESPN’s Josina Anderson and explained which team’s were courting him and what attracted him to Kansas City.

“I took visits with Cincinnati, Kansas City and Buffalo, and was in communication with Minnesota, Tennessee, Dallas, Houston and New Orleans. I made my decision before taking visits with those teams.”

That is a pretty good mix of teams and so it is good to know that the Chiefs were able convince Routt to come to town. There has been some fear among fans that free agents are avoiding Kansas City for various reasons but Routt’s signing would seem to indicate that those fears may be misguided.

So why choose KC over Dallas and New Orleans?

“I trust the Kansas City Chiefs to lead us in the right direction,” said Routt. “It helps that I’ll be playing in the AFC West going on eight years now, so I think that will be a plus. I’ve always had a lot of respect for Romeo Crennel with his defensive expertise, so the sky is the limit for us. When you look at that, and combine it with the pieces they have on offense, I don’t see why we can’t win.”