Kansas City Chiefs Draft Thoughts and Final Predictions
Well Chiefs fans, we made it. The week of the 2016 NFL Draft has finally arrived. In just a few short days we will begin to replace the rampant speculation and endless mock drafts with actual analysis of the players selected. If you’re anything like me you are ready to hit the fast forward button and skip ahead to Thursday night. I’ve watched hours and hours of tape on more prospects than I can name and chances are that half the players KC selects will be guys that I haven’t seen play at all. Still, before Roger Goodell walks to the podium and reads off the first selections I’ve got a few final thoughts and predictions to share with you.
The first thing I want to remind fans is that the Chiefs likely aren’t looking at the draft the same way you are. Fans tend to look at the roster, find the biggest hole, then find possible first round prospects to fill that hole. That’s not how the Chiefs have approached the draft. While the Chiefs likely factor their current roster into the decision it won’t be the top priority. So just because cornerback may be their biggest need doesn’t mean they’ll take one in the first or second round. If there is a corner that is at or near the top of their draft board when they pick, sure that works great, but if they’re up and a defensive lineman is the top guy on their board and the first cornerback is number fifteen on their board…..you’re getting a defensive lineman.
Good teams draft for the long term, not the short. Ten years from now nobody will care what the Chiefs 2016 depth chart looked like. They’ll simply look at the player KC selected in the first round and see if he turned into a star player or not. The other consideration they seem to make is which players they could be losing soon in free agency. All of KC’s first round picks during the Dorsey administration can be linked to a big time player on KC’s roster that was soon to hit free agency.
Eric Fisher/Branden Albert
Dee Ford/Tamba Hali and Justin Houston
Marcus Peters/Sean Smith
Keep that in mind as I get into my draft predictions.
Before I get to my draft predictions I have one other thing for you to keep in mind…. The draft experts that we’ve all been reading religiously don’t know it all. The Chiefs may draft a player in the second round that these “experts” said was a fifth round prospect. Before everyone freaks out about how “the Chiefs totally reached for this guy!” stop and think about Mitch Morse for a moment. NOBODY had Mitch Morse as a second round prospect in last year’s draft and yet he was one of the best rookie offensive linemen in the NFL. If the Chiefs have a player that they are convinced will be great they absolutely should take him before someone else does and if Todd McShay doesn’t like it then too bad for him. Would you rather draft another Mitch Morse or get an “A” for the pick from some draftnik the day after the draft?…..Exactly.
So now that I’ve told you to remember that the draft won’t go how you or some expert thinks it should, what am I going to do? Predict how it might go of course!
Next: Predicting KC's first round pick