Khalen Saunders’ departure is tough to see for Chiefs Kingdom

The Kansas City Chiefs knew they were going to see some fairly painful losses this offseason in free agency. It’s just what happens when a team wins a Super Bowl, and its own players find higher price tags attached due to their talents mixed with their championship experience. Plus it’s just the nature of the NFL to experience such turnover.

That still doesn’t help with the loss of Khalen Saunders.

For his first three years, the narrative surrounding Saunders took a series of serious turns, from significant buzz for a developmental defensive lineman with an exciting ceiling to questioning whether or not he would make the active roster following his third season in the league. Injuries and inconsistent play were his hallmarks during those early seasons. And then 2022 happened.

Saunders’ potential has always been clear to everyone, whether watching his tape from Western Illinois (where he was a man among boys at the FCS level) or the disruptive bursts that would flash on occasion in that first season (e.g. Week 9 against the Packers). But last year, when he could stay healthy and on the field, Saunders took his game to a new level.

It was last year that we would audibly gasp, as Chiefs Kingdom, at how quickly a beast of a man who weighs 325 lbs. could run down a quarterback out of bounds. It was last year that he showed off a non-stop motor and closing burst that surprised quarterbacks on occasion. It was last year that he seemed to find the confidence to truly be himself on and off the field for the first time as a pro.

It’s also helped that Saunders has always been among the most endearing players on the roster. Many players work their way into the hearts of fans by being excellent at what they do, but Saunders’ demeanor—his charm, his charisma, his larger-than-life personality, his humor—made him a guy that everyone just wanted to be around. He was a football player who also felt like “one of the guys.”

See, it doesn’t even help that he posts things like this:

And we weren’t the only ones to feel this way as fans:

None of this is intended to paint Saunders as better than he is. Saunders’ career-high in sacks is 3.5. He’s never played even 50 percent of defensive snaps in a season. He lost nearly two complete seasons to injury and there’s a lot of ground to make up. However, he was in the process of doing just that and it would have been fun to see him continue doing so in K.C.