Kansas City Chiefs will find trade deadline needs clarified after Titans game
By Matt Conner
Linebacker
It’s easy to think a position will be okay when everyone gets healthy, but constructing a roster on paper does no one any good. The reality is that that players need to be healthy in order to make an impact and the Chiefs linebackers simply cannot stay healthy at the same time.
Willie Gay Jr. still hasn’t played a starter’s amount of snaps in a game this season after missing a handful of games with a toe injury. Now that he’s at least healthy and back, Anthony Hitchens is now out in Week 7 and perhaps beyond with some sort of tricep injury and nerve damage has been mentioned. Given that the Chiefs weren’t all that deep in the first place with the inexperienced Nick Bolton behind those two and then a precipitous drop in overall talent to Ben Niemann and Darius Smith, there could be a need here for some depth and help specifically in coverage in the second level.
Are the Chiefs going to make a move? It likely depends on what trainers are saying internally at Arrowhead about Hitchens’ timeline, but it also depends on just how good Bolton and Gay look together against an experienced and savvy offense. The Titans know that Gay and Bolton are inexperienced (with a total of around 20-ish starts combined at the NFL level), and are likely going to try to create mismatches against them knowing that communication should even be a bit fuzzy on Sunday afternoon with Hitchens out.
If Gay and Bolton can get the job done, Veach might skate through the deadline without sweating too much about securing more help at linebacker.