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During the first wave of free agency, the Kansas City Chiefs acquired two former New York Giants: offensive lineman Mike Remmers and cornerback Antonio Hamilton. While both are coming to the team on veteran salary benefit deals that will save the Chiefs some money against the salary cap, that’s pretty much where the similarities between them end.
Hamilton, 27, has only started two games in a four-year career with the then-Oakland Raiders and the Giants. Remmers, 30, has amassed 78 starts during a nine-year journey that has included stops on seven different teams.
On his eighth, fellow former Giant Hamilton will be at least one familiar face in the locker room.
“I’ve been on a lot of teams,” Remmers told our Pete Sweeney during a Thursday conference call with reporters. “I feel like I know someone on every single team now. [But] when I looked at the [Chiefs] roster, I was like, ‘I don’t think I know anyone.’ I knew Blake Bell, but he signed somewhere else. So it’s nice knowing someone.”
And Hamilton — who is expected to serve primarily as a special teams regular, as he did during his two seasons in New York — gets a lot of respect from the longtime veteran.
“He’s a heckuva player and a heckuva teammate,” said Remmers. “I loved being with him in the locker room and everything — he’s a great guy. I’m looking forward to being teammates with him again.”
Hamilton feels much the same about Remmers.
”He’s a hard worker,” he told Sweeney on Thursday. “He’s a great offensive lineman. He’s a real humble guy — a family guy [who] just had another kid. I want to say congratulations to him for that. I’m excited that I have someone who is coming in with me, too — someone that I know — so it’s all not a fresh, fresh, fresh new start. But he’s a great guy — a great, hard-working, hard-nosed football player.”
A veteran offensive lineman with experience in nearly every position — along with a younger player with lots of special teams experience? Both are the kind of veteran players the Chiefs love to pick up — especially when they value relationships with their teammates.