Meet the Kansas City Chiefs players who signed futures contracts
By Kody Latham
Last year, Andrew Wylie caught on with the Chiefs as a reserve/futures signing. Here’s a rundown of this year’s class signed so far.
The Kansas City Chiefs season recently came to an end, with a loss in the AFC Championship game instead of a Super Bowl appearance. As much as it hurts to see things end this way, there is no denying that 2018 was a magical year for Chiefs Kingdom. We all were able to see what we had in Patrick Mahomes, and he blew the lid off of even the loftiest of expectations. No one could have expected him to throw for 50 touchdowns and over 5,000 yards in his first season starting.
The next 15 years for Chiefs Kingdom is about to be extremely exciting now that Mahomes is in the building. It will be Brett Veach’s job to ensure that Mahomes has enough talent around him to get to the super bowl consistently.
Veach has already begun that process by signing 11 players to reserve/futures contracts. For those that are unfamiliar, this is how teams start building the 90-man roster that we see during the preseason every year. Anyone who was not on an active roster at the end of the regular season is eligible to be signed to a reserve/futures contract. At this point in the year, most of the players that are being signed are from a team’s respective practice squad.
Once teams have secured whom they would like to retain for next season from their own practice squad, they will begin to branch out and sign anyone who was on another team’s practice squad or is interesting as a free agent. The poaching that tends to happen forces teams to sign their players quickly at the end of the year in fear of losing any of their developmental prospects.
Players like linebacker Brandon Marshall, running back Arian Foster, cornerback Chris Harris Jr, and linebacker James Harrison all started their respective careers on the practice squad. Just last year, the Chiefs signed offensive lineman Andrew Wylie to a futures contract and he went on to win the team’s rookie of the year award.
Let’s take a look at whom Veach thought could potentially improve the Chiefs next season.