As deadline nears, Chiefs’ roster decisions are harder this year. Who makes the cut?
The training camp routine has moved home to Kansas City, but many aspects of it remain unaltered. After practices, after meetings, and after the players have departed the facility, Chiefs coaches stick around.
It’s time to hand out grades.
They re-watch the day’s practice, snap by snap. Among the 22 players involved in any given play, the position coaches grade all of them. And then they write up corresponding evaluations.
In a normal year, they serve as important notes.
In 2020, they’re vital.
By 3 p.m. Saturday, the Chiefs must trim their roster to 53 players. Absent a preseason schedule this summer, the practice snaps constitute the extent of their on-field analysis — at least the only film that isn’t more than seven months old, anyway.
“That’s the challenge for the coaches. It’s a challenge for (general manager) Brett (Veach), really, and his crew,” Chiefs coach Andy Reid said, adding, “You don’t have those games to evaluate. But he’ll do good with it, I know.”
It hits some areas harder than others. With special teams, for example, coordinator Dave Toub said preseason games are perhaps the heaviest factor in determining roles. They rarely have the opportunity to run plays at full speed — tackling and blocking included — in a camp practice.
On defense, the preseason games are an indication of how well someone is grasping his assignments within the scheme.
But wherever the case, the biggest effect falls on the edges of the roster. The bubble. The Chiefs know what to expect from the veterans, those who have played in Kansas City for some time. The rookies? The newcomers? Practice has never seemed so important.
Reid’s camps are noted for their speed. Play after play at a rapid pace. In terms of preparation —and grading that preparation — it’s the best they have to work with this year.
“I’m always trying to test them mentally, even in walkthroughs,” defensive coordinator Steve Spagnuolo said. “I try to make them go fast. We have to find out who can think. When the bullets are flying, is somebody going to stick their head in the sand and go to sleep on us? We certainly don’t want those guys. But identifying the killers — and Brett Veach does a great job of it (and) Andy does — they’ve got a good pulse beat on it.”
On their own players, sure.
An even greater adjustment? Scouting the fringe players on other rosters. The Chiefs have been adept at it over the past few years.
Since taking over as the team’s general manager in 2017, Veach has been active in the weeks immediately before the season. He traded for lineman Cam Erving and linebacker Reggie Ragland in his first year. He traded lineman Parker Ehinger to the Cowboys for starting cornerback Charvarius Ward the next season in what’s certainly turned into a lopsided deal. He sent Carlos Hyde to the Texans for offensive lineman Martinas Rankin last August.
Those trades derived from tape study. In unproven players, they spotted something they liked in a preseason game or two. In some cases, they were players they liked in college, and now they’d seen them on an NFL field.
But for first-year players, that tape is non-existent now.
“We’ve always made a couple moves around this time that have affected our team in a positive way,” Reid said. “Without tape, it’s hard to see how other guys are really doing on other teams. And then you’ve got to be real with your own evaluations on your own team without going into really a ton of live situations. You don’t have those games to evaluate.”