Five biggest player surprises for the 2021 Kansas City Chiefs

Juan Thornhill

Juan Thornhill seemingly came out of nowhere. The second-round pick in the 2019 NFL Draft out of the University of Virginia hit the NFL gridiron and made an immediate impact. In his first season with the Chiefs he racked up three interceptions and five passes defended. He looked like he had a Pro Bowl career, at worst, in front of him.

Unfortunately, he was sidelined for the Chiefs incredible Super Bowl run during the final game of his rookie season with a torn ACL. He was able to return in the following season, but it wasn’t until the AFC Championship game that the burst he showed his rookie year started to stand out once again.

With an uptrend to end 2020, Chiefs Kingdom’s expectations were high for a bounce-back year from Thornhill and thus a deadly tandem to cap the Chiefs secondary. Instead, after taking 95 percent of the snaps in Week 1, Thornhill disappeared to the bench.

Over the next four games, Thornhill averaged 21 snaps a game, good for only 32 percent of the total defensive snaps. Steve Spagnuolo mentioned several times that Thornhill needed to “earn his snaps,” all the while Dan Sorensen was giving up play after play in coverage.

This is not a “bash on Dan Sorensen” piece, as I’ve said numerous times I appreciate his contribution, but the situation was still incredibly odd. It wasn’t until the sixth game of the season, after the Chiefs were blown out by the Buffalo Bills, that the coaching staff made the switch.

It’s very possible Thornhill was struggling with certain concepts in practice and the coaches were concerned about playing him too much. Yet, it’s hard to not look at their stubbornness with players like Sorenson and Ben Niemann and scratch your head.

We’ll probably never know the full answer to this one, but we’ll undoubtedly not stop asking the question.