Will the Chiefs be active leading at NFL trade deadline? ‘We’ll see,’ Andy Reid says
The NFL is hours away from a 3 p.m. CST Tuesday trade deadline before the second half of the regular season.
In the meantime, the annual question is whether the Chiefs, who sit on a 7-1 record, will enter the fray or sit on the sidelines.
“We’ll see how it goes here in the next couple of days,” Chiefs coach Andy Reid said Monday.
Even if the Chiefs decide to bolster their roster with a trade, the 2020 regular season brings about circumstances not seen in a normal year because of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Any player acquired in a trade will undergo tests first and must produce negative results before he’s allowed to join his new team on the field for game-week preparations.
COVID-19 thus adds another layer of uncertainty for teams like the Chiefs to consider on deadline day, but it’s not viewed as an outright obstacle — where there’s a will, there’s often a way.
The league has already seen movement on the trade front in the past week. The Cincinnati Bengals sent defensive end Carlos Dunlap to the Seattle Seahawks in exchange for former Kansas State offensive lineman B.J. Finney and a seventh-round pick.
Monday morning alone saw two trades go down around the NFL. According to multiple reports, the New Orleans Saints sent linebacker Kiko Alonso to the San Francisco 49ers in exchange for linebacker Kwon Alexander, while the Los Angeles Chargers sent defensive back Desmond King to the Tennessee Titans in exchange for a sixth-round pick.
So while the league’s COVID-19 protocol presents a challenge, Reid said out it won’t preclude a trade if a team wants a particular player badly enough.
“It’s unique, but there’s been movement,” Reid said. “I don’t know what takes place in the next couple of days whether it’s here or anywhere else, but there has been movement.
“I guess it’s somewhat unique just from a testing standpoint, which you have to get done before a player can actually get on the field.”
It remains to be seen whether the Chiefs will enter trade market ahead of the league-wide deadline. One could argue they really don’t have any holes to fill as they look to repeat as Super Bowl champions.
Sure, they’re dealing with injuries to their offensive line, with Mitchell Schwartz on the mend from a back injury and wide receiver Sammy Watkins continuing to nurse a hamstring injury he suffered in Week 5.
But they project to have offensive line help coming in the form of Martinas Rankin, who’s in his third week of practice while remaining on the physically unable to perform (PUP) list. Kansas City also has a Week 10 open date on the horizon, giving the Chiefs an extra period of rest for Schwartz and Watkins, should it be deemed necessary.
Over the past 11 regular seasons, the only instance in which the Chiefs were active before the regular-season deadline came on Oct. 18, 2016, when they traded running back Knile Davis to the Green Bay Packers under then-general manager John Dorsey.
