The Kansas City Chiefs have now signed six of their other draft picks: second round pick Jeff Allen, fourth round pick Devon Wylie, fifth round pick DeQuan Menzie, sixth round pick Cyrus Gray and seventh round picks Jerome Long and Junior Hemingway.
That leaves first round pick Dontari Poe and third round pick Donald Stephenson left to sign.
On Wednesday I had an opportunity to meet Jeff Passan, the Yahoo! Sports writer, who was co-hosting the Danny Parkins Show when I was on 610 Sports talking Chiefs for an hour.
He asked a good question that others are probably wondering: shouldn't Dontari Poe be in camp, like right now, with the rookie wage scale making the draft pick signing process so much easier?
I said I wasn't too worried about it right now. In late July, I'd be worried. Now? Not so much. A few teams have their entire draft classes signed, but not all of them. The Chiefs aren't behind in their draft pick signings relative to the rest of the league. Sure, I'd love Poe to be in camp but we're not that far removed from many first round picks not signing until August...and they were just fine. Poe was able to experience the Chiefs rookie minicamp so he at least has a taste of the Chiefs system. The rookie wage scale is new to all of us this offseason so we don't truly know what to expect but I think Poe should be signed within a few weeks. It's not a major concern to me right now.
Another thing to remember is that the earlier teams sign a draft pick, the earlier he gets his money. That's not always a good thing. I'm not speaking about the Chiefs specifically here, more of a league-wide thing, but teams have to be nervous about signing their first round pick in May, giving him a pile of cash with a ton of downtime, before the NFL or NFLPA has really had a chance to educate them on finances. It can be overwhelming for a rookie. First round picks used to sign closer to training camp in August. That's a nervous few months if you're a team watching a 22-year old player who just received a $4 million check and has three hours of work per week.