Arrowhead Pride
It’s the first weekly honor of Chenal’s NFL career.
The NFL has named Kansas City Chiefs linebacker Leo Chenal as its AFC special teams player of the week for Week 10 of the 2024 NFL season.
Chenal made 4 tackles during Sunday’s 16-14 victory over the Denver Broncos. But this award is about the play that kept it from being a 17-16 loss to the Broncos: Chenal’s block of Will Lutz’s 35-yard field goal attempt with one second left in the game.
“[The ball] was right below my palm,” Chenal told reporters after the game, eager to spread the credit among his teammates. “It was a good push by everybody, and I got through. We’ve been talking about it for a while — winning one of those — and we did it in a big moment.”
On Wednesday, head coach Andy Reid identified Chenal as an important player to two of his coordinators: special teams man Dave Toub and defensive guru Steve Spagnuolo.
“Toub banks on him to be a core guy [in his units],” declared Reid, “[while] Spags banks on him to be a guy that he can move around and do different things — from spying a quarterback to being a very good pass rusher to being able to set an edge in the run game. So he’s a valuable guy. He doesn’t say much, but does a lot. We all depend on him.”
In the other AFC awards, the Baltimore Ravens’ quarterback Lamar Jackson was named AFC offensive player of the week, while the Buffalo Bills’ cornerback Taron Johnson was named the AFC defensive player of the week.
