The Kansas City Chiefs have a desperate need. Everyone knows about the decimation of the Chiefs’ secondary. While they have tied down Ron Parker to a long-ish term deal and Eric Berry has been tagged, the departure of Tyvon Branch and uncertainty over Husain Abdullah’s future means the safety position is far from secure.
Alongside a struggling safety group comes the cornerback group, which has significantly decreased in quality with the departure of Sean Smith. Some have argued for the case of using the franchise tag on Smith rather than Berry, and while I can see the merits of tagging Smith and locking down the cornerback spot opposite of Marcus Peters, Eric Berry is a player deserving to be paid, and the Chiefs deserve to pay him.
He is the best run stuffing safety in the league with better coverage skills than many give him credit for. He is a ball hawk, has good hands and is a great tackler, a skill that is hugely underrated in today’s NFL. On top of his all-pro level ability, he is the emotional leader of this defense and this team.
Imagine if you’re Ron Parker or Marcus Peters, you come into this side amid the whirlwind of Eric Berry’s cancer sufferings. You see him work hard during his rehab, gain a pound during chemotherapy, return to the field and then play at such a high level. If the organization then lets him walk by refusing to pay him, what does that tell you? John Dorsey and Andy Reid clearly want to create a family atmosphere at Arrowhead. Not signing Eric Berry would destroy such camaraderie and team spirit that has been built over the past few seasons.
Whether the franchise tagging of Eric Berry is something that you agree with or not, however, is by the bye. It’s now draft season, and I, like many others, see cornerback as an essential need that Dorsey must fill with either of his first two picks. To address what cornerbacks could be available in this year’s draft, I compiled an average draft position of my top seven rated cornerbacks in this year’s draft, using the CBS big board, the DraftTek big board and Matt Miller’s big board of Bleacher Report.
You can find these boards below:
Next: Looking at the tiers