Chiefs’ Mack Lee Hill award winner in 2016?

When training camp opens later this month, the Kansas City Chiefs 2016 draft class will get their first real taste of the National Football League. Missouri Western University, the site of their annual camp activities, serves as a baptism by fire for first year players. After spending the better part of their summer in shorts, rookies will transition into full speed, padded practices. Players who flashed in the second and third phases of the offseason program often get washed out by the speed and complexity of camp’s early days.

Others, namely Marcus Peters in 2015, seize the opportunity to compete and make their short stay in St. Joseph, Missouri a stepping stone to a productive first year in the league. Peters went on to win Defensive Rookie of the Year honors and was later named the Mack Lee Hill Award winner, given to the top rookie or first-year player on the team. Today, with three and a half weeks remaining until the Chiefs open camp, I’d like to take make a prediction about which player from Kansas City’s incoming class will earn the award in the season forthcoming.

In the interest of time, let’s chop the draft class in half and disqualify five of the nine players the Chiefs drafted. For the purpose of today’s column, we’ll choose DeMarcus Robinson, Kevin Hogan, D.J. White, Eric Murray and Dadi Nicholas. Tough break, rook. Such is life in the NFL world that exists inside of these virtual walls. That quartet wasn’t selected at random though. There’s rationale behind those choices.

Next: Why those five?