Kansas City Chiefs: Three free agents with helpful experience
By KC Proctor
After two weeks the Chiefs look like a mostly complete team, but depth is still a concern. Here are three free agents for the team to consider signing.
After a short Week 2, it feels as if time is flying by in the 2022 NFL regular season. The Kansas City Chiefs are 2-0 to start the year, and there has been a ton of promise shown from each positional group, but just as it was heading into the offseason, depth is still a legitimate concern. After a Week 1 blowout victory against the Arizona Cardinals came with a number of significant injuries, the physicality of the Thursday night game against the Chargers got me thinking about what free agents are still available.
This consideration of further depth signings isn’t meant to take anything away from what the team has done thus far. Remaining undefeated after Thursday Night Football was nothing short of remarkable, and nearly all of the credit is due to the current depth on the roster. The Chargers outplayed the Chiefs for the entire game, and it was the fourth-quarter heroics of Jaylen Watson that secured the victory. Without putting any bad juju into the universe, here are the top three still available free agents who would offer further depth and security to the Chiefs roster.
1. Joe Haden
12-year NFL veteran Joe Haden could offer a great deal of experience and reliability to the Chiefs’ secondary. Whether or not he would jump right into the mix to take snaps from anyone else is complete speculation, but his name would look good on the depth chart.
Trent McDuffie’s placement on the injured reserve after Week 1 means that the earliest we could see him back on the field would be Week 6. Jaylen Watson was awesome in his first career start on Thursday night, and there was plenty of hype around the lengthy rookie Joshua Williams throughout the preseason, but one more injury in the Chiefs’ cornerback room would be detrimental. Dicaprio Bootle and Chris Lammons are the only depth remaining on the current roster behind Williams, so Joe Haden would not only add the needed depth but a vast improvement to the back end.
2021 was the least productive season of Haden’s career, and at 33 years old, he may never return to Pro Bowl-caliber play—he played in three since 2013—but he is certainly still serviceable. With multiple interceptions in eight of his 12 seasons in the NFL, he has always been a trusty set of hands, which now could be added to the Chiefs’ depth chart at a very reasonable cost.
Bringing in a 33-year-old cornerback would be completely against the grain of Brett Veach’s 2022 identity, but with such thin depth in a violent league, a Joe Haden security net sounds pretty good right about now.
Update: As it turns out, Joe Haden retired on the very day we published this, so apparently this was not meant to be. Or Veach waited a day too late.