Arrowhead Pride
Kansas City’s head coach needs to see how his new tackle is feeling during this week’s practices.
Halfway through the fourth quarter of Friday’s 19-17 victory over the Las Vegas Raiders, the Kansas City Chiefs did the same thing they had done with rookie left tackle Kingsley Suamataia late in the Week 2 game against the Cincinnati Bengals: they put their starting left tackle on the bench.
In Week 2, second-year tackle Wanya Morris came in for the Suamataia — but when Morris went to the bench on Friday, veteran left guard Joe Thuney slid to the outside; reserve guard Mike Caliendo came in to take Thuney’s spot.
But head coach Andy Reid remains convinced that while Suamatia and Morris have not been the players they expected for this season, they still have the potential to help the team in the future.
“We’ve got young guys that were working in there,” he told reporters on Monday. “They’re going against good players. The good ones have gotten — probably — the better of us. But [those are] things that these guys will learn from. They can bank [those] for the future and get themselves better. I think that’ll help us down the road.”
Reid said that for Morris, it has been a familiar story.
“Sometimes things snowball on you,” he remarked. “I mean, it’s a little bit of everything [that] gets you. He started off pretty good — and then it kind of went from there. That happens with young guys. Nobody wants that to happen that way, but sometimes it happens — and then you kind of get frozen in your own feet on what to do exactly.”
The Chiefs have already made a move to shore up the position: signing the Arizona Cardinals’ former left tackle D.J. Humphries. The 30-year-old Humphries — a first-round draft pick in 2015 — became a salary-cap casualty for 2024 after he suffered an ACL injury in last season’s Week 17 game. Reid hasn’t decided if Humphries will step in as the starter for the team’s important matchup against the Los Angeles Chargers on Sunday.
“I don’t think that’s probably fair to D.J. right now — just him coming off this offseason,” said Reid. “So I think we just play it by ear as we go. If he feels OK, then we give him an opportunity. If [he’s] not where [he] needs to be, then [we] don’t. So we’ll just see how it goes.”
If Humphries isn’t ready to play on Sunday, Reid is willing to have Thuney serve as quarterback Patrick Mahomes’ blind-side protector. But that wouldn’t be his first choice.
“Well, that’s another one of the options that we’ve got; we finished [Friday’s] game that way,” acknowledged the head coach. “[But] I’d rather have Joe playing [at] guard because he’s very good there — [and] Caliendo isn’t bad, either.
“So that’s a good problem to have: we’ve got some flexibility there, as needed.”
