Steve Spagnuolo loves to run his secondary through a veteran safety. Since arriving in Kansas City, the Kansas City Chiefs defense has leaned on Tyrann Mathieu, then Justin Reid, and then Bryan Cook, but when the Chiefs let Cook leave for Cincinnati this offseason, the Chiefs needed someone new. That’s when they handed Alohi Gilman a three-year, $24.75 million deal to handle the role. A few days into training camp, that's exactly what he's doing.
Spagnuolo spoke to Chiefs reporters on Thursday from training camp and said he'd already seen a difference from Gilman's minicamp performance to practice at St. Joseph.
"I’ve seen a change from the OTA practices until now. I was in the red zone today. Nohl Williams made a really big play, and I saw [Gilman] go right over, congratulate him, wanna do a little dance. Just something that little showed me what he’s all about. He’s a cerebral player. That’s what we thought when we got him here, and hopefully he’ll be that going forward."
Gilman was a big-ticket signing for the Chiefs in an important offseason that featured wholesale changes in the defensive backfield. Cook wasn’t the only free-agent loss this offseason, with cornerback Jaylen Watson leaving for the L.A. Rams as well. The Chiefs also accelerated the carousel with the blockbuster trade of Trent McDuffie that further stripped the secondary. That’s what makes Gilman’s arrival even more essential for a hoped-for rebound in 2026.
Fortunately, the Chiefs knew what they were getting in Gilman. The last time he took a young defensive back under his wing, it worked out about as well as it could. When asked about Kyle Hamilton during a media session at training camp, Gilman spoke about his relationship with the Baltimore Ravens' All-Pro safety after playing with him a year ago, after also crossing paths at Notre Dame.
Steve Spagnuolo needed Alohi Gilman to slot right in as a veteran leader, and he's doing exactly that early in Chiefs camp.
"I was a senior. He was a young, talented freshman coming in. … It got hard," Gilman said Wednesday. "I wanted to make sure a guy like that with that much potential, you got to believe in yourself. … And as you can see, he's one of the top guys. So that's my guy.”
Hamilton was close to transferring home to Georgia as a young prospect at Notre Dame when Gilman, his roommate and the team captain that year, talked him into staying. Hamilton turned into a three-time All-American, a future first-round pick, and eventually, the highest-paid safety in the league. That sort of leadership, demonstrated several times over, is what the Chiefs need most in the midst of a young secondary leaning on so many new faces.
By Gilman's own account, the defensive backs around him in camp are on the quiet side, so he spent the spring trying to loosen them up. Mostly that meant buying dinner.
"This group is a little bit more quiet, than I'd say, than other DB personalities that I've been around. So it's been a little bit harder to get the shell out of them a little more," Gilman said. "So I would take them out to dinner every week during OTAs."
Gilman was a sixth-round pick out of Notre Dame for the Chargers in 2020, back before name, image, and likeness money existed. The guys he's feeding now grew up on it.
"They're all NIL babies, most of them. So I didn't have the NIL. I was living off of FAFSA checks. And I thought I was rich still," Gilman said. "And they're like, dang, FAFSA, what is that? … They got a whole bunch of money. I was trying to buy a burger for five guys."
The leadership part comes easy to Gilman, but learning Spagnuolo's defense is the harder task at this point, which is why he spent the offseason learning it. “Every chance I got, I was trying to get an answer, question. I would meet with coaches before or after, call them late at night," Gilman said. "It was as much as I could to learn, because Coach Spags expects a lot out of us. And I got a lot of work to go. I came a long way, but I also got a big jump ahead that I'm going to take."
Gilman says he feels more settled now than he did in the spring, when mistakes came early and often in minicamp. While the defense is breaking in a lot of new players to Kansas City in all three levels, it helps that one of them is an old pro at getting himself and others settled into place.
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