Olivier Vernon makes sense as veteran depth for KC Chiefs

As the Kansas City Chiefs prepare to remake their defensive line in the 2022 offseason, they’re likely going to be looking for both major player and rotational parts. The rebuild feels much like the offensive line overhaul from just a year ago, a move that featured a brand new array of starters left to right in addition to new faces on the second level as well. One face that would make sense as a latter sort of move would be to check in on veteran pass rusher Olivier Vernon.

Last year, the Chiefs saw an overpaid defensive line fall short of expectations when it came to getting after the passer. While the Chiefs were far from the worst team in terms of pressuring the opposing QB, the Chiefs still couldn’t get home nearly enough for a team paying two of the most expensive pass rushers in all of football: Chris Jones and Frank Clark.

This offseason, Clark is likely gone unless he’s amenable to a team-friendly restructuring. That opens a hole at a position that is void of reliable production. In fact, if Clark is good as gone—as most predict—the Chiefs are looking at Mike Danna and Joshua Kaindoh as the lone holdovers from a year ago at defensive end.

Olivier Vernon makes sense as a low-risk signing for the Chiefs.

The good news is that any defensive front rebuild still has Jones as its cornerstone and that’s a major piece of the puzzle for Veach to figure out. Around him, however, the Chiefs will have to come up with new starters and rotational parts and that’s where Vernon could come in.

No one should view Vernon as a dependable starter at this point. While he was there as recently as 2020 (we’ll get there in a second), the truth is that he’s an aging veteran coming off of a year away from the game due to an Achilles injury that kept him from returning to full strength during the 2021 campaign.

Recently FanSided’s own Matt Lombardo broke the news that Vernon is ready to return to the field in 2022 and that he would be back to full strength. That places him on the list of available free agents this spring and summer, which should draw the Cheifs interest enough to at least bring him in for a visit at Arrowhead.

What would Vernon bring? While he sat out a season, he was still a very productive pass rusher just two seasons ago with the Cleveland Browns, where he put up 28 pressures, 16 quarterback hits, and 9 sacks in 13 starts. He also played in 87 percent of the snaps that season until his Achilles tear, proving that he was still a workhorse at the age of 30. Plus he’s got plenty of experience working with Steve Spagnuolo from their time together in New York.

Vernon will turn 32 in October, so he’s got something to prove on the other side of the injury but it’s not as if the reliable production was far off (e.g. like a Josh Gordon signing). At this point, Vernon is not going to take that visit until he’s healthy and ready to be checked out by a team’s medical personnel, which means we might not see him on a free agent tour anytime soon. The offseason is long, after all, and Vernon has no reason to rush his decision.

But the Chiefs are in wait-and-see mode anyway with Melvin Ingram and Vernon could be the ideal leverage for them as a fallback option or another savvy veteran who can contribute to a rotation likely to include some younger players to mentor. Vernon would not and should not be any sort of cornerstone outside for the Chiefs, but as a veteran who can rotate in and provide disruptive snaps on passing downs, Kansas City would give him a great place to return.