Armani Watts, Eric Murray and a confusing situation for the Kansas City Chiefs

The Kansas City Chiefs have a confusing situation playing out (or rather, not playing out) at safety and we’d like to know why.

It’s slightly amusing that the position that feels most tenuous on the Kansas City Chiefs right now is called “safety.” It feels anything but safe, to be honest.

Three weeks into the regular season, the Chiefs are starting Ron Parker, a man who was released earlier this offseason, and Eric Murray. The presumed starters from a few months ago, back when Parker was in the midst of a short stint with the Atlanta Falcons, are both injured. And the results have been worse than expected—which is saying a lot.

Right now, the Chiefs seem to be in hurry up and wait mode given that the two players expected to return from injury this season are both safeties: Eric Berry and Dan Sorensen. Berry is expected to suit up sometime in October, although Chiefs fans will be holding their breath hoping he can stay healthy, and Sorensen will return at midseason or later. Both players will add to the overall talent ceiling and depth, but both will also need considerable time to return to form after suffering severe injuries.

In the interim, the Chiefs have been, well, confusing for some fans wondering why in the world they’re not playing the only decent investment they made at the position in fourth round draft choice Armani Watts. In fact, the entire script around Watts makes zero sense.

The only real investment

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Remember, Brett Veach was on a mission this offseason to overhaul the defense in a significant way. Yet through it all, the safeties largely held their own. The team allowed Steven Terrell to leave and replaced him with Robert Golden (only to see him walk) in a minor move. The only major move? In what seemed to be a clear switch for the sake of youth and money, the Chiefs brought in Watts and released Parker.

If the Chiefs wanted to make moves at safety, this was the offseason to do it. Even now, weeks into the season, options like Eric Reid, Tyvon Branch, Mike Mitchell and more are just waiting for their opportunity to play. Others like Tre Boston, Tyrann Mathieu, Morgan Burnett and Kenny Vaccaro signed for far less (both time and money) than expected. In short, it was a complete buyer’s market for safeties this spring and summer.

Despite the defensive needs and the abundance of options, Brett Veach identified Armani Watts as the only real investment he wanted to make.

Plenty of experience

While it’s easy to second-guess things after the fact (re: injuries), Veach had a good argument for only going after Watts.

With Berry healthy and returning to play, Sorensen could be kicked back to third safety where he performed well enough to earn that lucrative four-year extension in the first place. Watts could learn alongside the two veterans and provide youth at a position where K.C. was getting a bit older and slower. He was also much cheaper than Parker would be—making less on a four-year deal than Parker was scheduled to make this season.

Even more important was that Watts should be as ready as anyone coming into the NFL. He came in with four full years of starting experience at Texas A&M. That means Watts played 45 games against the highest level of collegiate competition possible, amassing a total of 324 tackles, 17 passes defended, 10 interceptions and 7 forced fumbles. That’s a lot of production for a college player.

Then this summer, after missing the first few days of camp with an ankle injury, the Chiefs accelerated Watts’ learning curve. He played a total of 152 preseason snaps on defense—more than any other Chiefs defender—plus more on special teams. That’s somewhere between 2-3 complete games as a starter in the regular season.

The absence of Watts

Fast forward three weeks into the season and Watts is hardly on the field for the Chiefs defense. He’s played in 27 total snaps in the secondary while a re-signed Parker and Murray have occupied the two starting roles. Parker and Murray even played 100 percent of the Chiefs snaps this week, showing that Watts isn’t even beginning to break into the team’s starting line-up.

Here’s what is concerning about all of this: the Chiefs defense has not been playing well. In particular what is not working is the team’s safeties. Per Pro Football Focus, Murray has 3 missed tackles already after missing three all of last season and has allowed quarterbacks to completely over 72 percent of passes thrown his way.

All of this begs the question: why not play Armani Watts more? Is he really not ready after playing so much both in college and the preseason? Even if he’s not ready, if the defense is already performing poorly enough, what harm could it do to allow Watts to learn on the fly? Are the Chiefs wanting to develop Murray more at this point, as he’s still only 24 and two years from being a fourth round pick himself? Did Veach miss on this pick?

To be fair to Watts, not many of his contemporaries (4th round safeties and on) are earning major playing time with their respective teams. Kyzir White has settled in well with the Chargers and is playing a vast majority of defensive snaps. Tre Flowers, a fifth round pick, has earned a starting spot for the Seattle Seahawks. Outside of those, however, everyone is either struggling for snaps or not even active on game day—a list that includes Troy Apke, Siran Neal, Jordan Whitehead, Marcus Allen, Deshon Elliot and more.

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It’s too early to reach any conclusions on a player who entered the NFL officially this spring. It’s not too early, however, to at least ask questions. From the outside, this is a situation that doesn’t quite add up.

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