Chiefs: Organized Team Activities, Group One, May 20-22

Laddie Morse

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So it begins. The 2024 NFL season is underway for the Kansas City Chiefs. If you like to read about their offseason so far, you can go to yesterday’s article: “Chiefs Top Offseason Stories” for a slice. Are the Chiefs finished tweaking their roster? I seriously doubt that, and yesterday’s article helps to sort those possible moves out. As far as today is concerned, Organized Team Activities — OTAs –begin as a part of the Chiefs total offseason as they get ready to “three-peat.” Go –> here if you’d like to know more about the term “Three-peat” and why the Chiefs may end up owing Pat Riley if they win it all again this comign season and accomplish a “tree-peat.”

The Chiefs 2024 Offseason Plans

Here are the plans for the CHIefs meetings beginning today:

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The May 4-6 Rookie Mini-camp has already taken place and thus is marked through. From Chiefs beat writer Matt McMullen:

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“Organized Team Activities (OTAs) Group 1 for the 2024 Kansas City Chiefs will take place from May 20–22. This phase of the Chiefs’ offseason training program, “Phase Three”, includes non-padded 11-on-11 drills. OTAs also allow for 7-on-7 and 9-on-9 drills with no live contact.”

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“No live contact” is key. What that also means is, the Chiefs are not able to practice tackling or any of the running game that is physical. Players won’t be putting the pads on until several dasy into Training Camp and that may not even happen until the first days of August, even though TC begins in late July.

Although Andy Reid is known for running a though set of offseason workouts and Training Camp, the league has cut down the number of Preseason games from four to three making these offseason drills all the more important.

This year the rookies who are coming out are limited by the number of sophomore and junior prospect made available due to the new NIL (Name, Image, Likeness) rules which allow college players to make money off their own images. The recent Rookie Mini-camp included not only the drafted players by hte Chiefs but the UDFAs and what’s important to note is that those who attended the Chiefs rookie workouts were more competitive than it has been in recent years because of the shift in college NIL rulings. Since K.C. had somewhere between $14M and $20 M in cap dollars to spend, that camp was even more competitive since players and prospects knew that was the case.

I don’t expect today’s OTAs to be any different. Competitive is the word. The Chiefs had a great yeat on Defense in the 2023 season. FOX.com ranked the Chiefs 2nd in Totals Team Defense in 2023. Here’s DC Steve Spagnuolo talking about the difference in his DBs communicating with each other as so many of them were second year players (0:26):

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With Chamarri Connor and Nic Jones both starting their second seasons, the same high level of communication should be taking place. From teaching for 39+ years, I know that when you teach an idea to another person, the one teaching learns it all over again and with a much deeper appreciation for the facts. While the second year DBs from a year ago will be teaching these first year players and the same is true for the second year player teaching the rookies this year… we should have an upgrade in the defensive backfield. Yes, even though we lost L’Jarius Sneed.

Here’s HC Andy Reid on what he thinks is more helpful to the offense:

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I love the idea of Reid sitting in his office cubical and thinking up new diabolical plays for his new list of offensive players based on their skills. Reid says he takes plays from all over and even took a suggestion from a janitor once.

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There should also be press conferences today. I’ll post them here asap.

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Laddie Morse — ArrowheadOne

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