The Kansas City Chiefs will certainly have some new faces contributing during the 2020 NFL Season.
In his Thursday conference call with the media, general manager Brett Veach spoke about two potential contributors in the defensive secondary that have him and his personnel staff excited. Those players are Alex Brown and Antonio Hamilton, and as Veach explained, the Chiefs specifically targeted both of them ahead of the 2019 season.
“(Antonio) Hamilton is an interesting guy because he’s a guy – every year at the cut-down day, Director of Pro Personnel Tim Terry and Director of Football Operations Mike Borgonzi do a great job of really identifying young guys that we think are developmental talent guys – and at the trade/cut-down day last year, we identified Alex Brown and Antonio Hamilton as two guys that we thought we’d like to add if not to our active roster, to our practice squad,” Veach said. “Hamilton ended up making a team but Alex Brown, we were able to get on the practice squad. And Alex did a good job for us and was active late in the season for our Super Bowl run. So, Antonio was a guy, he was on the bubble and he made the team, but we monitored him throughout the season in case they had a roster crunch where they had to cut him, but they never did. But we certainly kept that in our back pocket for free agency.”
We’ve learned in the past with Veach, when he wants a player, he exhausts all options to make that happen. So while the team was able to acquire Brown during roster cuts in 2019, they had to wait a season to add Hamilton in free agency. Now that they’re both on the team, he likes their potential to help out in 2020.
“When the window for negotiation opened up, if we liked him back then and we wanted to add him back then, we may be able to do it, it makes sense for him and for us. We’re excited about him. You can never have enough depth. Certainly, losing Kendall Fuller, bringing Bashaud (Breeland) back, having (Charvarius) Ward and (Rashad) Fenton, and now Hamilton, gives us four corners that we think can help us on the field. Alex has done a great job on special teams and Antonio, as you know, is a good special teams player. So that really went all the way back to last year at the cut-down day…”
While the Chiefs lost Kendall Fuller to free agency, Veach seems hopeful that Hamilton can replace that presence on the defensive side of the ball. He expects both Hamilton and Brown to have strong roles when playing special teams as they have in the past too.
For a player like Hamilton, the opportunity to play on defense could be fruitful. Veach later added that the team wanted to sign him to a multi-year contract, but Hamilton opted for a one-year deal in order to bet on himself. No matter what happens, the Chiefs have options they’re excited about behind their projected starters and that will only help keep the team competitive as they continue to add more players this offseason.