Trent McDuffie to the Bills? How the Chiefs stole an All-Pro from their AFC rival
Trent McDuffie stepped outside to answer his phone on draft night, escaping the noise of a crowded ballroom. The primary emotion he remembers three years later: confusion.
His iPhone had screened a location in Kansas City, and McDuffie wondered if there had been a mistake. Or maybe even a prank.
“Brett Veach,” a man on the other line introduced himself.
McDuffie, in all his candor in re-telling the story now, thought: Who?
The phone in Kansas City was passed around, a handful of coaches and executives eager to talk to their newest first-round NFL Draft pick.
“Spags,” another introduced himself, in the charm of a New England accent.
And, well ...
“I didn’t know who was the GM, a coach, any of this stuff,” McDuffie said. “I didn’t know who was who.”
There’s an excuse for it, and it’s not apathy nor laziness. Quite the contrary.
As a projected early-round pick, McDuffie talked to 29 NFL teams over the two months preceding the 2022 NFL Draft. He met with members of their front offices and dissected plays with some of their coaching staffs.
Before and after each meeting or conversation, he did background research on everyone and everything. The coaches. The general managers. Even the cities.
Any information he could find, he saved.
He could still list them for you now, all 29 organizations included in his research routine. But the material aspect of this story is that the Chiefs weren’t one of the 29.
They were among the other three.
“Zero communication,” McDuffie said. “So I had no idea.”
But you know who did reach out?
The Bills.
A lot.
The Bills and Chiefs will meet in the AFC Championship Game on Sunday at GEHA Field at Arrowhead Stadium. It’s their fourth playoff meeting in five years, the Chiefs winning the initial three.
There’s something that might have changed the outcome of the last one, or maybe even the next one: What if a two-time All-Pro cornerback was playing for the other side?
Thisclose.
“They were one of the teams that talked to me the most for sure,” McDuffie said. “I felt like that was a good possibility — especially during draft night, knowing where they were (picking).
“Crazy, right?”
So why didn’t it come to fruition? Well, the Chiefs cut in line. Most intentionally, they cut the Bills in line.
Two teams in the midst of building some compelling playoff history built just as compelling of a draft history first. The 2017 trade headlines the list — the Chiefs trading a collections of picks to the Bills for the 10th overall choice.
With No. 10, they grabbed No. 15.
Mahomes.
It’s not as though the Bills were left empty-handed, with an All-Pro corner in Tre’Davious White in that same trade, and they got the quarterback next year in Josh Allen. More recently, the two teams swapped some picks again for the Chiefs to land Xavier Worthy last April. The Bills would later take Keon Coleman. Both receivers will play Sunday.
But this is a story about the other draft-day move and the Bills-Chiefs connection we don’t mention — but the one that provided the Chiefs a staple to a defense that has been among the best five units in football back-to-back years.
Where would the Chiefs be without cornerback Trent McDuffie?
We nearly have that answer. The Bills were desperate for a cornerback in the 2022 draft, same as the Chiefs. Two corners were gone in the first four picks — Derek Stingley Jr. to Houston at No. 3, and Sauce Gardner to the Jets at No. 4.
“I was like, man, we’re going to be trading out probably,” Bills general manager Brandon Beane thought.
But something unexpected unfolded over the middle of the round.
McDuffie dropped.
He was four picks shy of the Bills at No. 25 — a spot he thought could be his final destination — when an alert came into the Bills’ war room. New England had traded its pick, No. 21 overall.
Kansas City is now on the clock.
“They traded up in front of us,” whispered Terrance Gray, the Bills’ assistant director of player personnel, in a video that also captured a surprised look on Beane’s face.
Some 2,500 miles across the country — on the southwest coast of California — a 22-year-old college athlete could relate.
That was part of the Chiefs’ idea.
Part.
They didn’t want to reveal their hand, and they pulled that trick to draft Mahomes too. But there’s a difference here: They also just plain didn’t think McDuffie would be available. They graded 18 players as first-round talents that year and held the 29th pick. Do the math.
When one of those 18 remained at No. 21, though, they made a move — because they anticipated another team, the one that just so happened to be sitting at No. 25, might be eyeing a similar move.
“Just knowing some of the team needs that were directly in front of us,” Chiefs general manager Brett Veach explained it.
Veach wasn’t wrong, by the way. Responding to the Chiefs’ pick, the Bills traded up two spots to No. 23 and grabbed Kaiir Elam.
A bit of a different career trajectory. Elam has endured benchings and has started six games over the past two seasons. McDuffie was a Day 1 starter, a key contributor in two Super Bowls and the shutdown cornerback to replace L’Jarius Sneed. He’s done OK for himself.
“It all worked out,” McDuffie said.
He still does the homework, by the way. It’s sort of his nature. He pours hours into film study. Always wants a head start.
When he can get a head start, of course.
After the draft, he immediately opened the internet browser on his phone and typed in six words:
Kansas City Chiefs football coaching staff.
He wanted to know who the heck he just spoke with over the phone. When he landed, someone at the airport had quizzed him about whether he was in Kansas or Missouri.
He failed.
“That,” he said, “is what I was trying to avoid.”
By the time he arrived at the Chiefs’ facility, a few people were waiting: Veach, head coach Andy Reid, defensive coordinator Steve Spagnuolo, among them.
It’s funny looking back, he said, at the first thing he did.
An introduction.
“Hey,” he told them, “I’m Trent.”
This story was originally published January 24, 2025 at 5:30 AM.