Chiefs’ Juan Thornhill seeks to fill leadership void in wake of mentor Tyrann Mathieu
As eager and receptive rookie safety Juan Thornhill was getting acclimated to the Chiefs in 2019, he often found himself under the spell of charismatic counterpart Tyrann Mathieu.
“When he has that energy at all times, it also makes me want to have that same exact energy to match him,” Thornhill said that October when I asked him about Mathieu’s influence in the locker room at the team’s training facility. “He’s always doing the right things. If you follow his footsteps, you’re going to be in a really good spot.”
Now there’s a different meaning to Thornhill trying to follow in the footsteps of Mathieu, whom he has tried to emulate on and off the field … and whose swagger (and credentials) he perhaps was channeling when he declared at this week’s mandatory minicamp that he’s “expecting an All-Pro season. I’m saying that right now.”
We’ll come back to that aspiring All-Pro part.
But first let’s talk about the change of context for Thornhill in the wake of Mathieu’s departure.
Seeking to get younger and faster and disburse their budget otherwise, the Chiefs essentially let the 30-year-old Mathieu move on. That left Mathieu “heartbroken,” as he told The Star’s Sam McDowell in a long interview in New Orleans in April.
It also left the Chiefs’ defensive backfield, and to some extent the defense itself, with a certain void of voice and example, among other intangibles that had been vital to back-to-back Super Bowl berths.
Mathieu once told me that “being a great teammate … might be better than being the best player on the team.” He affirmed that by splicing together video clips to encourage his teammates and hosting weekly get-togethers with them. Those and countless other gestures helped galvanize those around him.
General manager Brett Veach in 2019 called Mathieu “a true bell cow.”
“When he speaks,” Veach said then, “people listen.”
So when he left, something was missing beyond just his play.
In terms of assuming Mathieu’s specific safety role, the Chiefs signed a three-year deal with Justin Reid, 25, who had been Mathieu’s teammate in Houston. He’ll bring his own dynamic leadership persona to the job, to be sure.
But he’d rather not try to be the next Mathieu, for whom he has immense admiration.
“I have always said this: that a copy is never worth as much as the original,” Reid said at his introductory news conference in March. “There will never, ever, ever be another Tyrann Mathieu to come through Kansas City. There just won’t.
“But I can bring the best Justin Reid possible to Kansas City, so that’s my mentality. I’m going to play to my strengths, I’m going to play to who I am.”
Which brings us back to Thornhill, who is no less devout to Mathieu but intends to express that in a different way.
At 26, he’s suddenly the oldest of the projected defensive backfield starters and has played more games as a Chief than any other DB currently on the roster.
Infused with the example of what Mathieu did for him and the Chiefs, he seems to see it as his responsibility to provide that element of leadership now and even embraces walking directly in those considerable footsteps.
Asked about how he’s approaching his first season without Mathieu’s vocal leadership, he beamed and said: “I love it, honestly, just being the oldest guy in the room with a bunch of rookies. I basically can lead the way now, just being a leader, taking on that role, leading the way.”
Asked what he had taken from Mathieu, he smiled again and said: “I took a lot from him … I was really quiet when he was here, because I knew that he was the type of guy that is just a leader and I followed in his footsteps.
“And now, it’s my time to take on that role and to get everybody lined up. So I think he did a good job of helping me get to this spot in my fourth year to become that leader.”
It remains to be seen, of course, how effective that will be and how much Thornhill intends to replicate some of Mathieu’s ways in terms of team-building.
But he has an obvious magnetism, evident every time he speaks with the media. And he’s certainly focused on communication on the field and getting fellow defensive backs to someone’s house “each and every week” … and liked reporting that guys weren’t “rushing out to go home” during minicamp.
Moreover, it’s easy to hear echoes of Mathieu in the types of things he says, particularly about the value of cultivating relationships that translate into on-field performance.
Here’s Mathieu from December 2019, when I spoke with him about the palpable chemistry in the locker room as the Chiefs were on their way to winning their first Super Bowl in 50 years: “You can’t not have chemistry and then go out on the field and kind of try to put it together.”
Here’s Thornhill from the other day: “If you’ve got guys in it that just want to hang with each other, you’re going to play so much better on the field.”
Speaking of playing so much better on the field …
Thornhill’s voice could gain further currency and clout if he returns to the form of 2019, when the second-round pick out of Virginia was making a fine case for Defensive Rookie of the Year before he suffered a season-ending ACL injury in Week 17.
Between the rehab that still wasn’t complete into the 2020 season and then being limited by the Chiefs last season, Thornhill hasn’t been the same consistently dynamic presence at least in part because he hasn’t been fully healthy since 2019.
Now, entering the final year of his rookie contract, he’ll tell you he’s “all the way back” and no longer thinking about the knee.
And that’s giving him a clear mind to come into his own …
Even as he hopes to succeed Mathieu in more ways than one.
Like Reid said, there will “never, ever, ever be” another Mathieu.
But someone with Thornhill’s talent and temperament striving to honor his mentor this way makes for a worthy inclination with major implications for the Chiefs if he can approximate it.