Arrowhead Pride
During the draft process, Kansas City’s general manager is in control — and for good reason.
There are a lot of significant voices in the halls and meeting rooms of the Kansas City Chiefs’ team facility at One Arrowhead Drive. On a given weekend during the season, the opinions of head coach Andy Reid, quarterback Patrick Mahomes (or any of the team’s other great players and coaches) can lead to a victory.
But during the offseason, general manager Brett Veach runs the show — and you won’t hear anyone say otherwise.
Veach and his staff do their most impactful work preparing for the NFL Draft. On opening night next Thursday in Detroit, the NFL’s defending champions hold the 32nd (and final) pick of the first round. It is Veach who will decide how the team will approach the draft.
“Brett heads this whole thing up,” head coach Andy Reid told reporters during a Zoom call on Monday, “and does a nice job with making sure he has all the rounds covered. There is a tremendous amount of input that goes into this first-round pick.
“However, there’s like a 50% success rate over a five-year period for these first-round picks; it’s a bit crazy for all the time spent doing them. So you have to make sure you cover the other parts of the draft — all the way to the point where your college free agents almost become your second-highest percentage to make it on these teams over that five-year span.”
At the top of the draft, the team’s board is narrower; there are only so many prospects who are projected to have the highest value. But in later rounds, things get more wide open. That’s why extensive work is done on the whole board; a proper ranking is essential.
“How you stack [it] ends up being so important,” explained Reid. “If you’re one guy off, that could be your Pro Bowl player — just by one guy.”
The Chiefs haven’t made it a secret — and on Monday, Reid confirmed it: wide receiver and left tackle are two positions they “are looking at.” A Day 1 talent for either position would be good news for quarterback Patrick Mahomes, so there’s a chance the three-time Super Bowl champion will be asked to give his opinion on a possible draft pick — just as he was for the 2020 draft — but he downplays that part of his role.
“I look at some of the stuff,” Mahomes admitted on Monday. “It’s cool that Veach and Coach Reid let me in on all the conversations that they have about players. I like that stuff; I like watching film and watching guys from college.
“[But] at the end of the day, we have the greatest of the greatest as far as GMs and head coach — and the staffs that they [have built] — so I know they’re going to get great players in here.
“I’ll give my input, but I trust that...
