Kansas City Chiefs Training Camp: Stock Up, Stock Down
Stock Up: Zach Fulton
Stock Down: Rishaw Johnson, Jeff Linkenbach
Zach Fulton’s stock has actually been going up for a while with me. I even wrote a post a few weeks ago titled “Zach Fulton: An In-Depth Look At The Kansas City Chiefs Next Right Guard” in which I broke down his college play. So this was the least surprising of the stock up/stock downs on this list. However, it is still a drastic change from what I thought about the RG position before training camp started.
I’ve believed that Zach Fulton would win the starting RG spot at some point this season for a few weeks now. I just believed it would be a closely contested competition. That doesn’t appear to be the case. Fulton looks like the hands down best man for the job. Fulton ran exclusively with the ones at Saturday’s practice. There was no rotation. That’s impressive for any rookie, let alone a sixth round draft pick. Seeing Fulton in person, I understand why the Chiefs are making it his job to lose.
Fulton (No. 73 in the picture above) is possibly the most physically imposing offensive lineman on the team. For lack of better words, he’s just a big dude. He’s not fat, just a big powerful looking man. He was the best guard I saw on the field at anchoring in the pass rush drill I watched. I was also impressed at how he was already effectively combo-blocking defenders with Rodney Hudson and Donald Stephenson. If Fulton has the strength to hold his ground and can pick things up fast enough to work with the other starting offensive linemen already, his future is bright.
On the other end of the spectrum, the stock down for Rishaw Johnson is not really for poor play on his part, he just doesn’t look as good as Fulton does. I originally thought Johnson would be in contention for the RG spot up until the end of preseason, but I think this race may be over before it started. I was really not impressed with Linkenbach. While some national media outlets still have him as the projected starter at RG, I’m not sure he’ll even make the team. On the same pass rushing drill I mentioned Fulton looking good in, Linkenbach on one rep was pushed back by Mike DeVito like you or I would push a shopping cart at Walmart.