We're still not entirely sure what happened to Joshua Uche in his short tenure with the Kansas City Chiefs. As it turns out, the player himself isn't any more enlightened than the rest of us.
Sometimes it makes sense to acquire something only to leave it entirely alone. If a classic car collector purchases a '57 Bel-Air, for instance, he will likely let it sit in pristine condition in some environmentally controlled garage. I've got a few old vintage sports cards myself, and I keep them in proper storage hoping they retain their value.
But it's hard to imagine the Chiefs landed Uche at the midpoint of the '24 season for the sake of keeping him on the sidelines. But that's exactly what they did and even Uche himself is not quite sure why that was the case.
No one seems able or willing to explain what went wrong with the Joshua Uche acquisition.
Uche is hoping a change of environment will help rebuild his market value with the Philadelphia Eagles. He signed a one-year deal with the defending Super Bowl champs worth only $1.92 million—the Eagles also got a nice steal with $4M for a single season for Azeez Ojulari as well—in the hopes that being a part of such a loaded defensive line will allow him to earn another long-term deal in '26.
In his introductory press conference for the Eagles, Uche was asked about his time with the Chiefs. Instead of looking back in anger, which the Gallagher brothers warned us not to do, Uche kept things classy but admitted the same confusion that the rest of Chiefs Kingdom shared.
“I’m not too sure from a personnel standpoint or a schematic standpoint where there was a disconnect. At the end of the day, I did what was asked of me to help the team win," said Uche. "But as a football player, you want to be out there with your teammates and your brothers. It was a situation where I was coming in the middle of the season, coming in late, and the stars didn’t fully align.”
Uche deserves a ton of credit for this response. He could have looked embittered and no one would have faulted him for that approach. After all, he played only 87 snaps in 6 games during the regular season and ended up a healthy scratch most of the time. He failed to see any time at all during the Chiefs' postseason run.
The lack of playing time might have been explainable if the Chiefs boasted the sort of overwhelming defensive line that the Eagles had last season. Yes, they had Chris Jones, Turk Wharton, and George Karlaftis, but there's no reason why Uche shouldn't have been deployed at key moments to bolster the unit and provide different pass-rushing looks as a much quicker option off the edge compared to the Chiefs' bigger bodies up front.
The Chiefs paid for the right to use Uche in just that way, and it's not as if the team didn't know Uche's rushing style. They did their homework and the front office decided to pay a future sixth-round pick to add him to a group that gave Malik Herring 193 snaps. Unfortunately, no one can make it make sense.
At the very least, Uche has kept his head up through it all, so there seems to be no hard feelings. That's good, but we were hoping that Uche might at least offer some clarity on the situation once he was away from Arrowhead. As it turns out, it's likely a minor mystery that will never be explained.