Building the Kansas City Chiefs all-time 55-man roster

The Kansas City Chiefs have a long and storied history in the NFL, but when creating a roster of the all-time 55, who are the best of the best?

Of the more than 1,100 players who have ever donned uniforms as part of the Kansas City Chiefs organization, 18 are in the Pro Football Hall of Fame (though some for their careers as part of other teams), 49 have been named 1st Team All-Pros (as Chiefs), and more than 100 have been named to Pro Bowl rosters (also as Chiefs).

However, when attempting to build an All-Time roster featuring the best players at each position, it is important to consider how pieces fit together, what roles different individuals can fill, and how they all come together to create to create the most competitive unit. This means having players who are capable of contributing on special teams, rotating in and out of the lineup, et cetera.

For this process, we attempted to utilize players based on their contributions while members of the Chiefs’ organization. (For instance, Joe Montana has the best career over any Chiefs quarterback ever, but is not on the list based on his contributions in Kansas City). We also attempted to consider how players may fit on the roster as a whole, based on schemes and lineups. This was a much easier process on offense than defense because of the interchangeability of formations. On defense, we simply created lineups for different configurations based on what we thought might happen.

Finally, we decided to opt in to the new 55-man roster afforded by the league starting in 2020, which simply let us keep two extra players that we did not want to cut.