The missing link in draft grades … One of our pet peeves when it comes to the draft, or at least the draft grades, is that for teams that have either acquired, are traded away, a veteran player for early picks, the player gained or lost is almost never accounted for in said analysis. In particular, we’ve had a hard time making sense of Kansas City’s trading star CB Trent McDuffie to the LA Rams for the 29th pick, as well as 3rd and 5th rounders this year and a third next. The consensus from analysts around the league seems to be generally positive; indeed one prominent analyst even had the Chiefs with the top-rated draft of any team. Said CBS Sports’ Pete Prisco of the Chiefs’ draft “they landed the best cover corner in the draft in Mansoor Delane, a power defensive tackle in Peter Woods” and an explosive edge rusher in underrated DE R Mason Thomas. Which is all true.
However, what the analysis does not mention is the fact the Chiefs already had one of the best corners in the league in Trent McDuffie, whom they had traded to the LA Rams for a very late opening round pick. It also doesn’t mention that they then had to include two of the three lower round picks they got in the McDuffie deal in order to move up from their own pick (#9) to get Delane at #6. Now, obviously, there are some salary cap implications to the whole deal and the Chiefs did flip some of those later round picks, but I am having a tough time figuring that what the Chiefs didn’t actually do here was swap one corner for another and then in effect trade the 9th pick overall for Woods, a player most analysts had listed as a 2nd round prospect, and a third round pick in 2027. And if that is a good deal I am not seeing it. Meanwhile, the Chiefs did absolutely nothing to help QB Patrick Mahomes – who’s coming off a torn ACL to boot – by addressing either a shaky offensive line or a subpar WR room that lacks a big-play threat that likely could have been accomplished is they had simply held onto McDuffie and used the 9th pick on one of those options.
