Laddie Morse
Meet the 2024 Kansas City Chiefs. They are a brand new team and more than one-third of their roster doesn’t have any idea what you’re talking about when you say, “We just won the Lombardi.” I was watching a podcast by Matt Derrick recently and he said that the Chiefs have 16 new faces on their roster. So, I took to the interweb and found a site that could figure out how much 37 (53 – 16 = 37) of 53 (the number of players allowed on the final roster), would be? The answer is technically: 69.811320754717 %. So, I rounded that off to 70% and Vwa-Lah (viola) –> The 70% Solution.
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Sweet 16 New Faces
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Of the QBs, the new face includes: Carson Wentz (as well as Bailey Zappe on the PS, but I’m not counting him).
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At the RB position, the new faces include: Carson Steele and newly signed Samaje Perine.
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At the WR position, the new faces include: Xavier Worthy, Hollywood Brown, and technically JuJu Smith-Schuster.
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At the TE position, the new faces are: Jared Wiley and Peyton Hendershot.
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On the OL, the new faces include: Kingsley Suamataia, Hunter Nourzad, and C.J. Hanson. All rookies.
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Among the Safeties, the new face includes: Jaden Hicks.
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Among the CBs, the two new faces include: Chris Roland-Wallace and there’s Eric Scott Jr..
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Among the DL, the new face includes: Cameron Thomas.
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Among the Punters, the new face includes: Matt Ariza.
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What is All Means
First of all, these Chiefs are a 30% different team than last year’s team. While that’s the main difference, my greatest concern is for the CB position. Although K.C. put in claims for three CBs this week, that may also tell you something about the position they are still attempting to recover from after trading away one of he leagues best corners in L’Jarius Sneed.
At Punter/holder, Matt Ariza has been called, “The Punt God” a nickname he’s uncomfortable with. However, we’ve already seen him flipping the field several times this offseason so we may have an upgrade at Punter over Tommy Townsend. BTW, Townsend was First Team All-Pro in 2022, so saying we have an upgrade at Punter is no small notion. Now… “Holder” may be a different case altogether.
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The above information about the team carrying 16 new faces we’ve not seen before, also means… we have a young team. How young?
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Travis Kelce will be 35 years of age about 5 1/2 weeks from now (on October 5). Justin Watson is the old man of the WR group at 28 years old. Carson Wentz is 31 which is ancient in NFL players terms (but not necessarily for QBs). Long Snapper James Winchester is 35 years old and this may be his last year. Joe Thuney is our journeyman starter at 31 (and turns 32 this November) and part time DL Mike Pennel is 33. For the Chiefs to average 25.91 years of age, you can tell that most of the players on this team are very young.
While this may be a younger team, each side of the ball is better than it was last year, a year in which they won it all. In fact, I’d say it’s much better. With the exception of CB (L’Jarius Sneed’s old position) this team is better and more experienced all the way around. HC Andy Reid likes to get the younger players involved early in their NFL life, so last season, as well as the season before, he played a lot of rookies.
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What do you think?
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Laddie Morse — ArrowheadOne
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