*** 2016 Prospect Tracker: Chiefs Interest / Visits / Work Outs ***
 

Well, this thread was delayed a few weeks this year, due to our unlikely playoff run. And thank goodness for that.

But here we are again - 5th year in a row tracking the college players the Chiefs have publicly or privately expressed interest in leading up to the 2016 NFL Draft.

Here's how we did last year.

For those who are new, the way this operates is that we collectively monitor various social media sources, blogs, articles and reports for news of the Chiefs' interest in a certain player. When posted in this thread, I will update the OP to include the player. *Please provide the link to the article, the players name, position and team.

I am going to try to link to player profiles when they exist, courtesy of draftbreakdown.com. For some of the lesser-known guys, it may just be a random video or profile from their team website.

Let's meet some of our future Chiefs:

2016 Draft - Chiefs Prospect Tracker

Offense
QB
Carson Wentz, NDSU
Kevin Hogan, Stanford
Paxton Lynch, Memphis

RB
Will Ratelle, FB, North Dakota State
Darrian Miller, Northern Iowa

WR
Braxton Miller, Ohio State
Michael Thomas, Ohio State
Quenton Bundrage, Iowa State
Laquon Treadwell, Ole Miss
Mitch Mathews, BYU
Paul McRoberts, Southeast Missouri State
Moritz Boehringer, Germany
Ryan Burbring, Bowling Green
Robby Anderson, Temple
Demarcus Robinson, Florida


TE


OT
Vadal Alexander, LSU
Caleb Benenoch, UCLA
Stephane Nembot, Colorado
David Hedelin, Purdue

G
Blake Muir, Baylor
Jake Bernstein, Vanderbilt

C
Evan Boehm, Missouri

Defense
CB
Mackensie Alexander, Clemson
Juston Burris, NC State
Maurice Canady, Virginia
Xavien Howard, Baylor
Jalen Ramsey, Florida State
Jonathan Jones, Auburn
William Jackson III, Houston
Kalan Reed, Southern Miss
Elie Bouka, Calgary
Arjen Colquhoun, Michigan State
Deiondre' Hall, Northern Iowa
Morgan Burns, Kansas State *Return Specialist

S
Vonn Bell, Ohio State
T.J. Green, Clemson
Derrick Kindred, TCU
Kevin Byard, Middle Tennessee State

OLB
Shaq Lawson, Clemson
Dadi Nicolas, Virginia Tech
De'Vondre Campbell, Minnesota
Quentin Gause, Rutgers
Perez Ford, Northern Illinois
Jatavis Brown, Akron
Stephen Weatherly, Vanderbilt
Terrance Smith, FSU

ILB
Reggie Ragland, Alabama
Blake Martinez, Stanford
Jaylon Smith, Notre Dame
Josh Forrest, Kentucky
Su'a Cravens, USC

DE
Austin Johnson, Penn State
Noah Spence, Eastern Kentucky
Bronson Kaufusi, Brigham Young
Robert Nkemdiche, Ole Miss
Roy Robertson-Harris, UTEP

DT
Vernon Butler, Louisiana Tech
Kyle Peko, Oregon State
Destiny Vaeao, Washington State
David Onyemata, Manitoba

Special Teams
P


K

If we can get a "sticky-icky, oo-wee, put it in the air," that would just be dandy.

Any updates from the Senior Bowl / Shrine Games?

I'm sure we had some folks out there.

I've seen we've visited with Austin Johnson (Penn State) and Reggie Ragland (Bama)

We met with Braxton Miller today too

If Ragland somehow falls to us we have to take him.

Im locking my preferred pick on Noah Spence. Think he is a top 10 talent in this draft that may fall because of his "drug related" issues. Justin Houston 2.0 type of situation if you ask me. I think he's that good of a player.

He definitely sounds like a Dorsey type of player if he checks out good like Peters.

Didnt he measure on the small side?

Updated

Ford has shown a fair amount of growth and Houston is Houston.

I don't see another home for Spence in this system.

Are you really so confident in this kid that you'll essentially be willing to bury Ford here?

I'd use a 2nd on him (he won't last that long) but I'm not going to use a 1st on a guy that makes a former 1st round pick who's showing significant potential redundant.

NY Giants SB teams, you can't have enough passrushers to stifle the most important position on the offense.

That remains a red herring.

Strahan was an aging shell of himself so the Giants grabbed Justin Tuck in the 3rd. They didn't go using 1st round picks on replacements for Strahan, nor did they plan on Tuck being a stud; sometimes it just works out that way.

Then folks want to cite JPP as some strategic masterstroke - the Giants were at a complete impasse with Umenyiora and knew they couldn't keep him so they grabbed JPP. In so doing, they pretty much ended Tuck's time as an effective player.

Let's not act like the Giants snagged JPP and suddenly Umenyiora, Tuck and JPP all set about wrecking stuff - that didn't happen. JPP's ascension came at the expense of Justin Tuck. And Umenyiora walked shortly thereafter.

Let's discuss how those 3 players would actually get on the field at the same time and be effective contributors. You gonna try to turn Houston into an interior pass-rusher? Of the 3, he's the only one that can do it.

It's easy to just say "Giants!" every time as many are prone to doing, but you have have an actual plan here as to how to make all 3 players immediate contributors if you intend to use a first rounder to block a first rounder and/or slide a franchise player into a different role.

I just don't see a way it works.

Red herring, no NYG took down Brady twice in the SB not once, but won it twice. I could mention Denver did it this post season, but alas if you are already deadset have favoritism with Ford then by all means lets not pick potentially elite talent.

Added to the fact, the Chiefs passrush goes to shit when both Houston and Hali are injured. If an impact player is available you select him, it's all about rotation and keeping the D-Line fresh.

But the first time had nothing to do with drafting a layered player - again, Tuck was just a mid-draft find that played great ball.

And they didn't do it by having 3 dynamic pass-rushers the second time - they only had 2 as JPP's performance essentially took Tuck off the field.

And good lord, just how many draft/financial assets are you going to throw at potential backups? Because being worried about what happens when BOTH of our top pass rushers goes down to injury most assuredly shouldn't be how one goes about conducting a draft.

If only we'd have drafted the last impact pass-rusher that fell down the board, right? Randy Gregory would've been the cure to all that ailed us.