Damon Arnette signing is all-risk, high-reward for KC Chiefs

According to Field Yates of ESPN, the Kansas City Chiefs are signing former Las Vegas Raiders cornerback Damon Arnette to a reserve/futures deal following his mid-season release from the Raiders.

Just in case you’re still unfamiliar with how futures deals work, essentially NFL teams can sign players to a minimum deal that is almost the same as having them on the roster but doesn’t take effect until the new league year, so players on a future deal will have a chance to earn a spot on the team in camp or preseason.

Damon Arnette is one of the more interesting prospects the Chiefs have signed to a futures deal given the fact that he was a first-round pick in the 2020 NFL Draft for the Raiders, but his time there was cut short due to off-field matters.

What does Damon Arnette signing mean for KC Chiefs?

Arnette was released from the Raiders in November after making death threats and brandishing a gun on social media. After everything the Raiders went through this season off the field, it’s easy to see why they wasted no time in moving on from Arnette.

On the Chiefs side of things, it’s a bit puzzling as to why the team would bring in yet another player who has a less than ideal background when acknowledging all of the legal troubles involving rostered players the team has had over the last few seasons, such as the cases with Frank Clark and Bashaud Breeland.

You would think after everything that the Chiefs would want to steer clear of all possible distractions and just have a smooth offseason for once, but that’ll be difficult to do with Arnette. The cornerback is a unique case. What he did to fall so far so early in his career is different from a player getting arrested for a misdemeanor or damaging property—you know, something like that. We’re talking about someone who threatened to kill someone for all of social media to see and easily could have followed through on that.

Then again, Andy Reid, Brett Veach, and Co. have a history of signing these reclamation projects and having them work out, so if anyone can “fix” Arnette it could be the Chiefs. However, it might take more than a football team taking him in to straighten up the Ohio State product..

I would understand anyone who isn’t fond of the signing. The Chiefs have had enough trouble with players and staff doing terrible things off the field, that said, a reserve/future deal is about as low-risk as it gets so if anything were to happen it wouldn’t cost anything for the Chiefs to move on.

Arnette was drafted 19th overall out of OSUand was quite a surprise coming off the board as early as he did. Now former Raiders GM Mike Mayock had a history of making picks like that but that’s beside the point. Coming out, Arnette was viewed as a decent athlete who could cover inside and outside and play zone coverage effectively in an NFL team’s rotation, but that didn’t exactly translate.

Arnette played sparingly for the Raiders in his one and a half seasons there and in his time he accumulated 29 combined tackles, 1 TFL, and 7 passes defended.

The Chiefs have a niche for developing low-profile cornerbacks and revamping failed draft picks, so we’ll see what happens with Arnette. The biggest question is whether or not he can clean up his image and stay focused on football. If he can do that, he has the potential to be a depth cornerback for a good team.

Truth be told, though, Arnette technically has the tools to be a decent player in the league, but the fact that he hasn’t really done anything of note in his career or shown any flashes coupled with what we know about his off-field personality makes this signing all-risk, high-reward.