Chiefs snap counts: Darrel Williams bests Darwin Thompson for playing time

A closer look at the Kansas City Chiefs snap counts from Sunday’s win over the Baltimore Ravens shows a few interesting notes in terms of playing time.

The official snap counts are out from the Kansas City Chiefs’ impressive win over the Baltimore Ravens on Sunday afternoon, and a closer look at the playing time given to some players is interesting to note.

If you watched the Chiefs win in their home opener, the biggest change in terms of playing time was quite noticeable on the field. We’ll get to the team’s running backs in a minute. At other positions, there were a few surprises when looking at snaps and how the Chiefs are dividing up playing time.

Let’s take a closer look at the snap counts and what we learned.

SURPRISES AT RB

If we’re honest, we fully expected a Darwin Thompson party on Sunday at Arrowhead. The stage seemed set. Damien Williams was ruled out a few days before the game. LeSean McCoy was going to be limited with an ankle injury. Darrel Williams was also around, but Thompson played the part of spoiler in the preseason—a surprisingly ascendant young talent who looked determined to make coaching decisions quite difficult.

If the Chiefs coaches had a hard time keeping Thompson off the field, they certainly didn’t show it. Instead it was Darrel Williams who earned the lion’s share of playing time at the position on Sunday, his best chance to display his skills since first arriving in K.C. in the spring of 2018 as a priority free agent.

The former LSU running back ran 9 times for 62 yards, including a 41-yard burst. He also caught 5 passes for 47 yards in the game, giving him 109 yards from scrimmage. By comparison, he only had 71 total yards all of his rookie season in which he played 6 games.

For those who were wooed by a rookie’s preseason performance, it was a reminder that regular season readiness is more than just being able to move the chains when you have the ball.

For those who were bullish on Darrel’s talents, you were proven right on Sunday. What a great performance given the opportunity.

XAVIER WILLIAMS SHOWS UP

Williams was a name often tossed around as a potential surprise cut or a player who could be traded to help the Chiefs meet other roster needs and pare down to 53 to enter the season. The Chiefs have a deep line and were forced to make decisions on guys like Justin Hamilton and Joey Ivie with Khalen Saunders also on the roster as a developmental prospect.

It turns out that the Chiefs like Williams’ plenty enough to give him a solid amount of snaps as a rotational lineman—good news for the local product. Williams played a solid 36 snaps on Sunday and is clearly in a secondary tier with Tanoh Kpassagnon (36) and Emmanuel Ogbah (37).

In time, the Chiefs might phase out Williams for Saunders or another young talent, but it likely won’t be in 2019. It makes sense to keep him for this entire season as a contributor and let him walk in free agency with an expired contract next offseason.

KENDALL FULLER COMMITMENT

Fuller is often known as the Chiefs’ best overall cornerback, so it’s always a bit odd seeing the Chiefs giving 14 more snaps in a game to Charvarius Ward (80 to 66), who has obvious struggles at times. Then again, the Chiefs stated things would be this way earlier in the offseason.

Fuller turned heads with the Washington Redskins as arguably the best slot corner in the game. Defensive coordinator Steve Spagnuolo came in this offseason determined to elevate Fuller’s game back to that level and made the verbal commitment to reporters that the team would keep Fuller in the slot alone.

So far, that’s remained the case. Any struggle on the outside is being given a chance to work itself out as the Chiefs keep Fuller inside—for better or for worse. It will be interesting to see if this continues game after game for some time, but in the early going, Spags looks like a man of his word.

IS RAGLAND OUT OF OPPS?

There’s a very clear pecking order when it comes to the linebacking corps and the way things have shaken out for Spags new defense. Up top for the Chiefs are Anthony Hitchens (68 snaps) and Damien Wilson (65). Next is Ben Niemann and Darron Lee (15 apiece). From there, Dorian O’Daniel isn’t receiving an ounce of playing time in the team’s actual defense, but he is a special teams asset with 21 snaps there.

As for Reggie Ragland, he’s a man out of place.

Ragland earned 3 snaps on defense (4% of possible playing time) and 7 snaps on special teams (26%) on Sunday. In other words, he’s a rarely used asset in any one category and it would not be hard for the team to replace that production with someone else in such limited duty. The question is this: is Ragland not an impact player or could he at least find some space to grow with a different defense?

Ragland will be an interesting name to watch as the trade deadline nears because he seems like such an obvious candidate for a team in the midst of radical reinvention to trade for him. The Dolphins just claimed former first rounder Taco Charlton on waivers from the Cowboys for this very reason: to see what a young player has to offer if given a better opportunity.

Could a team like the Dolphins make a play for Ragland as well for a conditional pick? Do the Chiefs want him around in case of injury? Perhaps he’s valuable as security for the team, but it’s sad to see the former Bama linebacker unable to gain more playing time for this Chiefs defense.