Can Chiefs get impact from Mitch Mathews?

Last week, I decided to do a piece on the Kansas City Chiefs’ fifth round pick from this year, ex-Stanford QB Kevin Hogan and if he could possibly come the quarterback of the future for Kansas City.

This week, I have decided to take a different direction, focusing on a new Chief that actually wasn’t selected in this year’s draft. Every year, there are new players that come aboard teams after the NFL draft as undrafted free agents. With those players comes new-found hope not only from those players, but also their respective teams and fanbases as well. This year is no different for the Chiefs. KC signed nine more UDFAs after the league’s annual player selection event concluded on May 1.

Out of this year’s crop of undrafted players that the Chiefs acquired, former BYU receiver Mitch Mathews might very well be the most exciting and interesting player of the bunch.

Mathews was a standout receiver for Brigham Young University and was surprisingly not picked by any of the 30 teams in this year’s draft. Kansas City took full advantage of this, nabbing the Beaverton, Ore. native after the draft had commenced. At 6-foot-6 and 215 pounds, Mathews is not only one of the biggest wide receivers that was taken by an NFL team this year, but also one of the most athletic as well.

That was on full display last year in week one of the college football season when Mathews went up and got a 42-yard hail mary pass from BYU quarterback Tanner Mangum on the last play of the game to beat Nebraska in a shocker.

When you look at his collegiate career, Mathews’ numbers speak for themselves. In his four years with the Cougars, he scored 24 touchdowns, including 20 of those in his last two seasons combined. He also had a team-high 73 and 54 receptions in his junior and senior campaigns, respectively.

This is all without even looking at his yards per catch, which was a whopping 13.7 YPC average for his career at BYU, and is also very impressive. Adding to his accomplishments, the ex-BYU star racked up six different 100-yard receiving games while in college and was a constant threat while he was in the game in his last two years for the Cougars.

Mathews not only put up great numbers during his college days, but he also showed the ability to stretch the field as he hauled in six passes of 30-plus yards during his senior season and seven passes of 20-plus yards in his junior season. Also, included in this was a 71-yard catch in his junior year and a 72-yard catch in his senior year. If he can do anything similar to this at the next level, this would give the Chiefs a potential third receiving option to stretch the field behind Jeremy Maclin and Travis Kelce.

Mathews also has great hands, a high football IQ and excellent character as well. Couple this with the fact that he will be working with BYU alum and current Chiefs head coach Andy Reid and the picture becomes more and more clearer why the Chiefs and Mathews could very well be a good fit in the end.

One of the only weaknesses that I see in him is that he just has average speed for an NFL wideout. This isn’t exactly a dealbreaker for NFL success, but it will make his route running, blocking ability and attention to detail with defenses that much more important as he will need to be solid in all three of these areas in order to make an impact for KC this season and beyond.

That being said, NFL.com’s Gil Brandt still thinks that Mathews has the athleticism and speed to do well at the next level. After evaluating him, its difficult to say if Mathews will make an impact at this point in time as we still need to see how he fares at rookie mini-camp, OTAs, training camp, preseason games and regular season games as well, but it’s fun to think about what could become of this mammoth and very talented wideout.

How do the rest of the Addicts think  Mathews will do this year? Will he not even make the team or will he put up some solid numbers for an undrafted rookie wide receiver? Let’s debate!