Chiefs' draft history makes Joe Thuney trade even riskier for Patrick Mahomes

Player departures are an unfortunate reality of the NFL. This hit home for the Kansas City Chiefs on Wednesday when All-Pro guard Joe Thuney was traded to the Chicago Bears. The move appears to be motivated in part by the need for cap relief. Last week, the team decided to use the franchise tag as a placeholder while they negotiate a long-term deal for Trey Smith. That tag carries a $23.4 million cap number in the short term unless the two sides agree on an extension.

With the start of the new league year approaching, the Chiefs needed to create some headroom, but they've left themselves with new roster problems to solve.

It's no surprise when an NFL team parts ways with a veteran player. The best teams make such moves with decisiveness and precision. The reality is that Joe Thuney, despite his value to Kansas City's 2024 offensive line, will be 33 years old in November. This was inevitable at some point. My concern here isn't with replacing him with a younger, more affordable option, but with whether or not the Chiefs' scouting and development of young offensive line talent supports such a transaction.

Chiefs' inability to draft tackles may hurt even more after Joe Thuney trade

The Chiefs' offensive line struggles have raised real questions about the root cause of the dysfunction. The team's made significant investments into their offensive line in recent years. Since 2022, Kansas City has drafted five offensive line players: Darian Kinnard, Wanya Morris, Kingsley Suamataia, Hunter Nourzad, and C.J. Hanson. The jury's still out for most of that group, but one (Kinnard) has already washed out of the organization. If you add Lucas Niang (drafted in 2020), you could argue they've missed on offensive tackle prospects four times in as many years.

On some level, coaching and player development are contributing to the dysfunction. Offensive line coach Andy Heck, a 20-year veteran of the NFL, has been in his role since Andy Reid's arrival in 2013. While the overall results have been mixed during his tenure, he has consistently turned late-round picks—Zach Fulton, Laurent Duvernay-Tardif, Nick Allegretti, Trey Smith—into contributors. Each member of that group was drafted in the sixth or seventh round, which is an impressive track record.

The Chiefs' trouble has been at developing offensive tackles. Heck's had four tackle prospects drafted in the Top 100: Eric Fisher (first overall pick in 2013), Lucas Niang (the 96th pick in 2020), Wanya Morris (92nd overall in 2023), and Kingsley Suamataia (the 63rd pick last year). Fisher rounded into a solid NFL player, Niang will look to regroup on a new team in 2025, the starting job was too big for Morris last season, and Suamataia's being kicked inside to guard.

That begs the question: Is scouting offensive line talent at the tackle spots a concern? Kinnard is the only other tackle selected in recent years, and the overall outcomes of this group have been disappointing, to say the least. Morris is still very much a question mark, Suamataia's playing a new position in Year Two, and Niang and Kinnard are both off the team now.

Trading Thuney was necessitated by a need to reduce heavy financial commitments along the offensive line. That can only work if the team successfully fills out the offensive line with inexpensive but reliable talent elsewhere. That process becomes difficult when you already have $150 million in total contract value already on the books for Humphrey and Jawaan Taylor. When you add the $27 million Thuney was due in 2025, the necessity of this move becomes painfully clear.