Will the Chiefs Find a Premium Player at a Premium Position With Their First Pick in the Draft?

Will the Kansas City Chiefs find a premium player at a premium position with their first pick in the draft? That’s what we really all want to know, right? In their first four years together, John Dorsey and Andy Reid have managed to draft for those premium positions —  QB, OLB/DE (pass rusher), LOT, CB and WR — with their first pick in the draft every single year, while the players they’ve drafted weren’t always premium players. However, they are batting .500 with a two-year hitting streak. Both Marcus Peters and Chris Jones would qualify as premium players but Dee Ford and Eric Fisher haven’t shown up quite yet. Knowing what we know about their propensity and predilection for drafting premium type early on, it’s a good bet that rend will continue in 2017.

I guess the big question is, will a player that JARD (John-Andy-Reid-Dorsey) likes still be there on the board at pick #27 and will that player be able to come in and start or contribute heavy minutes right away in his rookie season, like both Peters and Jones have done?

The following chart may help to determine if that is a possibility.

Rating System

I only rated the top 5 needs for each team. The top need received a “5,” the next greatest need received a “4” and so on. At the end, I added up and totaled all the team needs to see which position has been identified as the position(s) of greatest need. Results are near the bottom of the chart.

I used many different resources to determine the top five needs for each team.

Premium Players

Premium players have been defined for the purposes of this chart: QBs, Pass Rushers, Offensive Tackles, Cornerbacks and Wide Receivers.

Quarterback

Eight teams have been identified as needing a QB as their primary need, more than any other position. That’s too bad for those teams because this looks like a bad year for top tier QBs. Yet I still expect to see a number of QBs taken early in this draft.

OLB – DE – Pass Rusher

This category was the top vote getter by quite a wide margin at 55. While the Chiefs might like to pick up another pass rushing OLB, it doesn’t look promising. Please note, one reason this category is so big is that both OLBs and DEs are grouped together under the “pass rusher” heading. Still, the need for pass rushers outweighs all other needs in the league this offseason.

OT – OL

Offensive tackles and offensive linemen were grouped because when rating services say “OL” is a need they are usually talking about prospects who can play OT. These OT types are the second greatest need in the draft this year and it’s not that surprising. Each draft, for the past 4 or 5 years, has been rife with defensive linemen and thin on offensive linemen, and specifically, offensive tackles. If the Chiefs are going to take an offensive tackle, with the idea of moving that OT inside to play guard, they’ll have to find a good one early in the draft because other teams will very likely be on the hunt for good offensive tackles too.

Cornerbacks

The need for cornerbacks is right up there with OTs because the NFL has become a pass-first, and frequently, league. If the Chiefs want to secure another top notch corner in this draft they’ll likely have to hope other teams look to fill their other needs first.

Wide Receivers

Wide receivers scored a 42 but there are a lot of good WRs in this draft so fans should be prepared for the Chiefs to take one. This is the only premium position that the Chiefs haven’t selected with the first pick in the past four seasons. CBS Sports ranks 14 WRs in the top 100 and 11 of those wide outs are 6-feet tall or taller. Since “tall players” are on John Dorsey’s draft day check-list, the possibility goes up, that the Chiefs will take a pass catcher early in the draft… IMHO.

Tight Ends

With the tight ends receiving the least number of needs-votes here, it seems like an increasing possibility that the Chiefs would take one. Only eight other teams even list TEs as a need and since DraftTek has the best-5 TEs rated in the top 79 overall prospects, if one of those top rated TEs falls to the Chiefs at #91 or even at #104 I’d expect JARD to jump on it.

Running backs

It also looks like running back would be a good pick down the draft board with so few other teams identifying RB as one of their top 5 needs. Plus, it looks like a good draft for running backs.

From what I can tell here on this chart, if the Chiefs are to pick another premium player with their first pick — again — it will likely be, 1) an Offensive Tackle, 2) a Cornerback or, 3) a Wide Receiver. Can you tell anything more from this chart?