The biggest early season surprises for the Kansas City Chiefs

Here are a handful of Chiefs who have been pleasant surprises in the season’s first quarter.

When you bring back 20 of 22 starters and every coach on your staff from a championship team, you’ve already got a leg up on your opponents. Pepper in the lack of minicamps, training camp, and preseason, and it only highlights the advantages the 2020 Kansas City Chiefs had over the field in being able to hit the ground running in the most raw and unpredictable first quarters of any NFL season in recent memory.

Despite the team’s much-heralded carryover from their Super Bowl campaign into the new season, there were still concerns about the way the team would replace veterans Damien Williams and Laurent Duvernay-Tardif (both of whom opted out of the 2020 season), and Stefen Wisniewski, Emmanuel Ogbah, Kendall Fuller, and Reggie Ragland, who signed elsewhere in free agency. The Chiefs had fewer holes to fill than any other team in the league, but on the other hand, the bar is set higher in Kansas City than any other NFL town. Anything less than another Lombardi Trophy will be looked back as a letdown for this franchise.

The Chiefs have certainly relied upon their most familiar faces in the first quarter of 2020. Make no mistake about it; Head coach Andy Reid, quarterback Patrick Mahomes, pass catchers Tyreek Hill, Sammy Watkins and Travis Kelce, and defenders such as Frank Clark, Chris Jones, and Tyrann Mathieu are the root of this team’s success. But there have also been some surprises on the way.

L’Jarius Sneed and Rashad Fenton

Much has been made of Brett Veach’s approach toward stocking this team’s cornerback group. Literally thousands of hours of time in Chiefs media has been spent hashing out either a potential trade for a star corner like Jalen Ramsey or Patrick Peterson, or drafting one of the bigger names such as Byron Murphy, Rock-Ya Sin, Kristian Fulton, Noah Igbinoghene, and Jeff Gladney. Each of these corners (and many others) were common threads among Chiefs Kingdom as “must pursue” type players, but Veach has consistently spent minimal assets at the position.

Rather than investing highly at corner in 2019, Veach waited until the sixth round of the draft before selecting little-known Rashad Fenton. In 2020, the Chiefs again were in dire need of a cornerback, but Veach waited until the fourth round, when he chose L’Jarius Sneed.

Now we see the fruit. And Veach deserves a collective “you were right” from Chiefs Kingdom.

Without Fuller, the team knew it would rely on both Fenton and Sneed for depth in 2020. But then Bashaud Breeland‘s four-game suspension and Charvarius Ward‘s broken hand have thrust both young corners into prominent roles in the defense.

Steve Spagnuolo has shown a bold confidence in the two, frequently utilizing man-to-man defense and showing no fear in letting his cornerbacks show what they can do. Through four games, the Chiefs have allowed the fewest touchdown passes (4) in the AFC. Sneed intercepted a pass in each of his first two games before leaving in Week 3 with a broken collarbone. Fenton, who had a clutch interception in the Chiefs’ 2019 win over the Chargers in Mexico, has taken on his new role in stride and has also been a remarkably consistent tackler. Fenton ranks as the 6th best tackler in the league according to PFF.

Ward and now Breeland are back in the lineup, but let’s not forget that both are in a contract year. We will learn a little bit more about how Spagnuolo will utilize Fenton when the Chiefs take on the Raiders this Sunday. The team website already lists Breeland as the starter on the boundary, but it remains to be seen if Fenton will relinquish his role to the veteran immediately.