The Kansas City Chiefs have already started to undergo quite the overhaul along the defensive interior this offseason. They've watched Derrick Nnadi leave in free agency while signing Khyiris Tonga with plenty of runway left to alter the position. Now the latest departure comes with the news of Jerry Tillery's new home.
The Indianapolis Colts have given Tillery a new place to land in the AFC after a single season spent with the Chiefs. This will be his fifth team in the NFL, and he'll be joining Nnadi in the process.
The longtime tenant of the AFC West
Tillery has spent most of his NFL career patrolling the AFC West's waters. The Los Angeles Chargers drafted him 28th overall out of Notre Dame in 2019, and kept him around for his first three seasons before releasing him with two months left on his rookie deal. The Las Vegas Raiders claimed him off waivers, re-signed him for 2023, and then let him go as well. He spent 2024 with the Minnesota Vikings before Kansas City signed him last March. They were Tillery's fourth team in three years.
The Chiefs were looking for interior depth next to Chris Jones, and Tillery fit the bill as a reliable space-eater with familiarity from being in the same division. In Minnesota, he'd logged 467 defensive snaps along the line and shown he could still be useful in rotation, even if his production—28 tackles and zero sacks in 2024—didn't exactly bring about a bidding war.
A Rotational Year in Kansas City
Tillery's 2025 season with the Chiefs felt a lot like the rest of his career, where he was present without standing out. He played in all 17 games and finished with 1.5 sacks and 18 tackles across 374 defensive snaps, a rotational workload that reflected what Kansas City needed from him and what he was able to give. He wasn't signed to be a difference-maker. He was asked to hold up next to Jones and eat snaps, and he did that well enough to stay on the field all season.
At 28, Tillery heads to Indy with the makeup that brought about his arrival in Kansas City, a former first-round pick effective enough to warrant one-year deals, while being just forgettable enough to keep getting let go.