Early roster takeaways from Kansas City Chiefs training camp

Last Friday and Saturday I made my annual pilgrimage to Saint Joseph, Missouri to take in a couple of days of the Kansas City Chiefs training camp. If you’ve never gone, I highly recommend it. You definitely feel a lot more up close and personal than you do at actual games (at least from the seats I usually have). Plus it’s a chance to see how the team is looking after months of speculation.

I always try to go to two back-to-back days of practice. That’s because I don’t want to jump to conclusions if a guy has one good or bad practice. It’s also because sometimes the coaching staff will rotate who gets reps where from day to day. So if you go to just one practice and see “Player A” getting reps ahead of “Player B” you might think that’s where they are at right now, but if you went the next day you might see that they swapped spots in the order.

After spending two days at Chiefs training camp, Lyle Graversen came away with a few takes on the roster, especially at the wide receiver position.

I will still give the disclaimer that despite going to two consecutive practices the coaches could still drastically change things up and some of the roster takes you’re about to read could change. Having said that, I definitely came away from my two days at camp with some strong feelings about the roster for this season. Some things were surprises and some just confirmed what I expected coming in.

I went into things wanting to get a feel for how the pass rush looked. I was especially curious about how rookie George Karlaftis would look and if Frank Clark would look any more effective having lost some weight this offseason. However, I quickly shifted my focus elsewhere because without full pads and contact during the two practices I was at I realized I would get a much more accurate look at how guys were doing in the other two areas of interest, the receivers and the secondary.

I’ve got my takeaways broken up into offensive and defensive takes. Some are just self-explanatory quick hitters and others take a little more in-depth explanation. Let’s actually start things off with the defense.