Kansas City Chiefs: Top ten training camp battles to watch

1. Linebackers

If you think of all the great NFL defenses of your lifetime, they probably all had good linebacker play. The 2018 Kansas City Chiefs did not. The fact that edge players Dee Ford and Justin Houston qualified as linebackers in KC’s old scheme kept the group from being abysmal, but the inside play and sub package performances were downright awful last season. That is why the linebacker position is my number one training camp battle to watch this year because I believe no other spot will have the outcome of their training camp battle have a bigger impact on the success of the team this season than this one.

Based off of comments by Anthony Hitchens, it looks like the first string in the base defense may start out with Hitchens as the weakside linebacker, Reggie Ragland in the middle, and newly acquired Damien Wilson as the starting strongside linebacker. That trio actually has a pretty decent chance of being a good group to stop the run in the base defense. I am hopeful the new scheme and coaching staff will put them in a much better position to succeed. If the unit is at all solid against the run it will be an improvement over last season. However, where the linebackers were really terrible last year was in coverage.

We don’t need to rehash just how bad they were in coverage, but it was bad. If the Chiefs play in their base much (as opposed to most defenses that now are in the sub package over 50% of the snaps), they could have problems versus the pass because none of those three “starters” are very good in coverage.

If the Chiefs felt like they needed better coverage in the base defense they could easily upgrade it by sliding Hitchens to the middle and starting either Darron Lee (who graded WAY better in coverage last sesaon) or Dorian O’Daniel at the weakside linebacker spot.

The real competition is which linebackers will be on the field in the sub package. Hitchens sounded like he expected to stay on the field but I think an argument can be made that Lee and O’Daniel are the two best suited for coverage duties on clear passing downs. While I feel confident in the defensive line and safeties in KC’s new defense there may not be a spot I have more questions about than the linebackers.

Don’t be surprised if you see the Chiefs rotating Hitchens, Ragland, Wilson, Lee, O’Daniel, and even second year special teams standout Ben Niemann in and out in different situations with the first string during training camp. Contractually, the Chiefs are tied to Hitchens for the time being, but I really feel like all those players I listed have a chance to establish themselves as contributors in this new defense. The Chiefs now have the personnel to use different groupings for different situations and I am fascinated by how the staff will use these guys and which players will really step up and flourish given the opportunity.

If the Chiefs can come up with a linebacker group/rotation that is significantly more effective against both the run and pass than the unit was in 2018 it may go further to improving this team than any other training camp battle that we’ll see this season. That is why I have the linebackers as my top battle to watch when I go to training camp in the coming weeks.

So what do you think Chiefs fans? Do you agree with my list? Did I leave any key battles out? Would you have them in a drastically different order?

I’d love to read your thoughts in the comments below. Regardless of what you think of this list we can all agree that its a great thing that our favorite team will finally be taking the (practice) field in the coming days and we can finally start to see how these battles will actually turn out.