Could the Kansas City Chiefs draft a player in the NFL supplemental draft?

Adonis Alexander has been declared academically ineligible for the 2018 college season. Could the Chiefs be looking to add him in the supplemental draft?

Life tends to act in funny ways, sometimes it will knock you down into the dirt and laugh at you. Other times it will give you a random stroke of luck that you desperately needed.

The Kansas City Chiefs may have had the latter situation fall right into their laps. Adonis Alexander was recently declared academically ineligible for the upcoming 2018 college season.

Alexander, a corner that has been attending Virginia Tech for the past three years released this statement following the news:

There may be some of you wondering about what in the world the NFL’s Supplemental Draft is. No one would blame you for this. The supplemental draft has primarily been treated similarly to that family member you never want to introduce to anyone. That is for good reason. The NFL supplemental draft was implemented in 1977. Since then there have only been 43 players selected over the 41 years it has been around. The supplemental draft was made for players that had become ineligible for the college season after the more traditional NFL draft had been held.

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The supplemental draft is much more of a bidding war than anything else. There is still a draft order, but teams first enter in names of players that they interest them. After that, they then apply a pick to that player, if two teams apply a pick from the same round then whoever holds the higher pick wins.

It is a bit of an odd process, but one that has paid off for teams in the past. There was a special supplemental draft held in 1984 for college players that had already signed with other leagues. That draft produced some of the best football players ever to play. They were Steve Young, Gary Zimmerman, and Reggie White.

This draft comes with a major catch though. If a team decides to choose a player in the supplemental draft, they will lose that corresponding pick the next season. For example, if Kansas City were to choose Alexander in the third-round of the draft they would lose their third-round pick in the 2019 draft. This has led to the majority of players being chosen in the later rounds of the draft. Josh Gordon is the most recent high round pick, having been chosen in the second round of the 2012 draft by the Clevland Browns.

This leaves the Chiefs in a unique position. Kansas City is very thin at the cornerback position, so having a talented corner possibly drop into their laps could be that stroke of luck needed to help solidify the position. Especially when the outlook for the position going past 2018 is bleak at the moment. The real question is whether Alexander is even worth drafting. I decided to look at the few games on draftbreakdown to see if there was any real reason to be excited about him.

First, let’s start off with the good things that Alexander showed in his game film:

This was the very first thing that stood out to me about Alexander. He has no fear when it comes to getting physical, something that some fans have been critical about with recent Chiefs corners.

Alexander is in the bottom left corner of the screen, his willingness to be physical is not just when playing the ball in the air. He routinely will attack a running back and has shown a knack for at least being able to cut their legs out from under them. Alexander finished his career at Virginia Tech with 125 total tackles, 91 of which were solo.

Alexander also showed the ability to stay with receivers down the field. During the few games available. He never seemed to let another player leave him in the dust. He was always close enough to at least attempt to make the tackle on any given pass. In addition to the 17 pass breakups, Alexander also had 7 interceptions on his resume.

However, things were not all sunshine and roses on his game film. There were some very obvious issues that Alexander is going to have to fix at the next level.

Alexander was converted from the safety position when he came out of high school. In addition to not having great hip fluidity, he also displayed issues with backpedaling. Obviously, those are not exactly the greatest issues to have when playing the corner position. The other major issue I saw with Alexander was how easily teams were able to run slants on him.

Alexander is at the top of the screen, and as you can see Alexander was easily able to be beaten with the slant. Teams would often target him on something similar to gain first downs just about every game.

Outside of his on-field play, there are also off-the-field incidents that Kansas City is going to have to consider. So should the Chiefs consider giving up a future draft pick for Alexander? It really depends on whether they feel they can develop him. We have to remember the Chiefs do not have a fourth-round pick already next season. This is due to the first big trade Brett Veach made for Reggie Ragland when he took over in Kansas City.

That means (hopefully) the only way the Chiefs would acquire him would be with a late-round pick. Anything higher than a fourth-round pick would be a bit rich for a player that needs as much work as Alexander. It will be an interesting situation to watch during what is normally a dead part of the season.