KC Chiefs send Rashad Fenton to Falcons for late-round pick

The Kansas City Chiefs have surprised everyone with a trade of cornerback Rashad Fenton to the Atlanta Falcons just under the wire.

The Kansas City Chiefs looked like they were standing pat at the NFL’s trade deadline given that time had expired and no deals had been leaked. But then, several minutes later, somehow NFL reporter Field Yates got word that general manager Brett Veach had decided to make a trade after all, a smaller deal that sent cornerback Rashad Fenton to the Atlanta Falcons.

Per FanSided’s own Matt Verderame, the Falcons are giving up a conditional seventh-round choice in exchange for Fenton.

Fenton goes to Atlanta as a half-season rental knowing he’s hitting free agency next spring, so Veach is able to secure some sort of a future asset here in exchange for a player who’d fallen out of favor within a remade secondary. Fenton had been out with injury in recent weeks, but clearly, the Chiefs felt they could get along just fine without him.

Before this season, Fenton was a good story for the Chiefs as a former sixth-round pick who not only went on to make the team several years in a row but climbed the depth chart to become a versatile sub and even a starter on the boundary for several games in a row.

This year, the Chiefs made every effort to get younger and better in terms of the team’s pass defense (see the ways in which Gabriel Davis of the Bills or Ja’Marr Chase of the Bengals torched them in the postseason) and the newer players fared just fine when pressed into immediate playing time. The Chiefs get Trent McDuffie back after the bye as well, so Fenton was apparently expendable given the current lineup.

Fenton had 123 tackles and 2 interceptions in 47 total games for the Chiefs.