The Kansas City Chiefs special teams has a points system for each of the players and coach Dave Toub tallies it up each week. Tyreek Hill is leading everyone with Eric Murray - who is their most consistent special teamer - behind him.
Tyreek saw some of his special teams run slow down last week when it was Knile Davis returning kicks instead of him. It sounds like that will continue this week, especially if Tyreek’s playing time continues to increase with Jeremy Maclin out.
“We do ask him to do a lot,” Chiefs OC Matt Nagy said. “And then you take into account his role on special teams and the fact that he’s a rookie. So right now, it’s a long part of the season and we certainly need to take that into consideration and understand how his body and mind will react.”
So it sounds like Knile returning kicks will continue, which makes sense.
“Yeah, he’s getting a lot of offense, everybody has seen it,” Chiefs special teams coach Dave Toub said. “He’s out there a lot, he’s running a lot, kickoff returns, you run that and then you’re playing offense. It makes sense to take a guy, a good player that can come off the field instead of having to run a long route for an offensive play. “
It’s not a huge deal to me because the Chiefs already have so many good kick returner candidates.
“Knile is a very good kickoff returner as we saw in the playoff game. We’re very fortunate, we have a lot of guys. We have Knile, we have De’Anthony and we have No. 10 who’s outstanding. We’re lucky.”
Tyreek is the best punt returner in the NFL so he will continue to do that but that may be his only special teams role in the near future.