How the Kansas City Chiefs second-year players could make a leap forward
By Matt Conner
ARMANI WATTS
Round: 4
What We’ve Seen: When the Chiefs selected Armani Watts out of Texas A&M in the fourth round last year, the move was seen as a likely steal given Watts’ tremendous amount of starting experience and production at the highest levels of college football. Watts rewarded the Chiefs’ willingness to let him learn on the fly at free safety. He clearly struggled early in wins over the Pittsburgh Steelers and San Francisco 49ers but he’s proved himself a quick study with strong performances in Weeks 4-5.
Unfortunately, one of the biggest concerns about Watts coming into the draft (health) surfaced the following week in the form of core muscle injury which required surgery. Watts would be placed on injured reserve and miss the rest of his rookie campaign.
What We Could See: Let’s start with the downside (from Watts’ perspective). The Chiefs made a very loud statement about the talent levels at safety when they imported Tyrann Mathieu to the tune of $14M annually and used a second-round pick on Juan Thornhill in this year’s draft. Any idea of Watts stepping back into his starting role at free safety has likely been altered to make room for Thornhill’s obvious talents, although both new players are very versatile and could be given PT elsewhere if Spags sees fit.
That said, the Chiefs are no stranger to playing multiple safeties in oft-used sub packages that are actually deployed more than the team’s base defense. Dan Sorensen has built a nice career as a special teams contributor and backup safety, and Watts, at the very least, is capable of the same. He’s a true ballhawk with a penchant for the big play, and his athleticism should help those skills translate to the NFL. The Chiefs might have hit the reset button at safety in terms of starters, but there’s no reason why Watts still could not emerge as a playmaking safety in a secondary that needs serious help.