The NFL draft is just a few short weeks away. Like most fans of the Kansas City Chiefs, I’ ve spent countless hours since the season ended studying, debating, and speculating which players the Chiefs should take. At this point I have done most of the research that I plan on doing and have formulated lists of players that I personally think would be good picks for the Chiefs.
While there are dozens of players that I like, there are always a few each year that I develop a huge “draft crush” on. These are players that I just keep going back to again and again. These are the players that will make me the most excited to see end up in Kansas City on draft day. Let me be clear, they are not the players I think are the best at each position, just the guys I personally really like for one reason or another, specifically for the Chiefs.
I had enough players this year that I decided to break this list into two parts. This week you are getting my offensive draft crushes and next week we’ll take a look at the defenders that I really love. Before we get started I want to address the fact (spoiler alert) that you won’t find any wide receivers or offensive linemen on my list of offensive draft crushes. It’s not that I wouldn’t be fine with the Chiefs drafting those positions, I just didn’t find any one guy at those positions that I fell in love with.
When it comes to the wide receivers I did take a fair amount of time to study and watch a lot of prospects. I’m on record as believing that the Chiefs don’t need to take a wide receiver early because of the players they already have on the roster. However, I did look for a mid-round prospect that I might really get excited about KC taking, I just didn’t find one. There are several guys that I would be fine with the Chiefs taking in the mid rounds, there just wasn’t one particular guy that really jumped off the screen at me when I watched their tape.
As far as the offensive line goes I’ll admit that I didn’t do much homework on that position group this year. I’m an offensive line guy. I’ve spent much of the last few offseasons preaching building the line as the key to a good offense. That having been said, the Chiefs never seem to draft linemen that I like and often they draft guys that I’ve never even heard of despite extensive draft research at the position (Parker Ehinger and Laurent Duvernay-Tardif as prime examples). When you combine that with the fact that I believe the Chiefs think they have their starting five intact already (Eric Fisher, Ehinger, Mitch Morse, LDT, Mitchell Schwartz) and I was simply not motivated to spend my draft research time on the offensive line. I still hope they draft one or two for depth, but I wouldn’t count on them taking anyone with their top 100 selections.
Now that we’ve covered who isn’t on this list, let’s get to the guys that are. We’ll start with my number one draft crush of the 2017 NFL Draft.