DeMarcus Robinson, Chris Conley and the battle at wide receiver

The Kansas City Chiefs will have an interesting battle developing at wide receiver behind Tyreek Hill and Sammy Watkins.

Chris Conley or DeMarcus Robinson.

Yes, there are others. The Kansas City Chiefs have several wide receivers with obvious potential besides the obvious starting pair of Tyreek Hill and Sammy Watkins. De’Anthony Thomas is back for a year. Byron Pringle is in camp. The Chiefs drafted Jehu Chesson just one year ago in the fourth round, trading up for the former Michigan receiver just one round after Kareem Hunt. There’s also Gehrig Dieter, Marcus Kemp, Jordan Smallwood, Daniel Braverman and Elijah Marks.

But really, the spot for a third receiver at this point for the Chiefs comes down to Conley and Robinson.

A recent column at NFL.com attempting to project starters for each team recently gave Robinson the nod as the Chiefs third receiver. It was an interesting notice since Conley is typically given the nod as the third WR on the roster. But Patrick Mahomes’ had a (seemingly) nice connection with Robinson in the season finale at Denver, and it’s easy to make some projections.

Rewind one year ago and Conley was in full control of a starting wide receiver spot. That’s before he was lost for the season due to injury coming into the last season of his contract. Now the former third rounder seems like he could be on the outside looking in with more to prove than most would have believed coming into the 2017 season.

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Robinson on the other hand showed up late for the Chiefs including a nice effort in the unfortunate playoff loss to the Tennessee Titans. He had four catches on four targets for 57 receiving yards and 1 touchdowns. Including his four catch effort (on 10 targets) from Mahomes in the season finale and it becomes clear that Robinson was earning some impressive reps at season’s end for the Chiefs.

This is a good problem for the Chiefs to have. Conley is very bright, motivated and hard working. He’s also an incredible athlete who has yet to be truly featured in the Chiefs offense that has too many other mouths to feed. It’s clearly a mistake to forget about Conley and believe Robinson has anything sewn up, because if Conley is truly healthy, he’s a serious talent to be used with Mahomes under center.

That said, Robinson is also remarkably athletic and the only reason he wasn’t selected in the late first or second round in the 2015 NFL Draft is because of character concerns at the University of Florida. On pure talent or potential, he’s also very deserving of reps in this offense.

It will be interesting to watch who emerges for the Chiefs as their offense comes together in training camp. Hopefully Conley is healthy enough to give it a real go and both players get their best chance to compete for targets of their own.

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