The Kansas City Chiefs lost a ton of leadership in the secondary this offseason. Sean Smith and Tyvon Branch left in free agency. Husain Abdullah retired. Eric Berry isn't here right now. That’s a pretty big leadership void.
“I think we’ve got a lot of young players in the room and bringing them along has probably been the biggest thing that we’ve accomplished, catching them up to speed," safety Daniel Sorensen said via quotes from the Chiefs.
"Top-to-bottom we have a lot of youth in there. We lost some key veterans from last year who had a lot of experience. So it’s now catching those guys up to the level we played at last year, which was a very high level. That’s the standard, to bring some of these younger guys up and, myself included, to be at that level.”
The Chiefs are essentially replacing those veterans with a bunch of first and second-year players. Marcus Peters becomes the top corner. Third-year corner Phillip Gaines, who was injured most of his second season, will compete with a rookie for the other corner spot. Steven Nelson, second-year player, could make it as the fifth defensive back. One of the Chiefs three rookie corners will factor in somehow.
I didn't really think about how much was lost this offseason until I started adding it all up here. Yikes. The Chiefs do have a couple of very good coaches in Al Harris and Emmitt Thomas. Harris can probably relate to the young players more while Thomas is a Hall of Famer. The young Chiefs would be wise to use those resources.