The Kansas City Chiefs were back at training camp practice at Missouri Western State University in St. Joseph, Missouri on Sunday.
It was a crowded house for the ever-popular “Family Fun Day” at training camp. Families of Chiefs fans flocked to practice in order to get a look at the newest iteration of the team. If they were hoping to find the offense in midseason form, Chiefs Kingdom probably left practice disappointed. It was a rough practice session for the starting offense in particular, though they did have some nice moments as practice continued.
Here are a few of the things that we’re taking away from the latest practice session:
Sloppy day of offensive play
The Chiefs did not have a good day of offensive work on Sunday. During one of the 11-on-11 periods of practice, the starting offense saw a trio of false start penalties. That included two false starts from franchise-tagged LT Orlando Brown Jr., who notably was absent from voluntary offseason workouts and held out during the first week of training camp. The sequence of penalties was so egregious that Andy Reid threw the starters off the field before their series of plays were over.
Chiefs offensive coordinator Eric Bieniemy had a very good teaching point to share from these particular offensive struggles.
“The thing that we need to learn once we watch the tape is that things happen in life,” Bieniemy said. “Meaning, every play is not going to be your best play. So, how you respond, tells you what type of character you have. We’ve got to make sure that we’re displaying that character and understand that this is a team game. We will respond, but that last play can’t impact what we’re going to do next.”
Of those three false starts, Bieniemy says that the team simply didn’t execute and referred again to his message above.
“For whatever reason, it happened,” Bieniemy said. “But (it’s) a life lesson and we keep it moving.”
Geron Christian getting starting snaps at right tackle
The Chiefs gave the starting offensive line a bit of a change-up at times on Sunday. Free agent signing Geron Christian got some work as the team’s starting right tackle in place of Andrew Wylie. While Christian and Wylie seemed to rotate throughout practice, the team clearly wanted to get a look at the former third-round draft pick out of Louisville.
“This is the stage where you’re always just trying to look at certain pieces to see what they can do and how they handle it when placed in that situation, ” Chiefs OC Eric Bieniemy explained. “Each and every day I’m sure, you’ve probably seen something, whether it’s at the O-Line, receiver, or running back position. We just want to see how guys play.”
Bieniemy declined to comment on Christian’s performance as he wanted to watch the tape more closely.
“Right now, I’m not passing judgment on anyone,” Bieniemy said. “The thing that we want to do while we’re out here, are we all being accountable to one another? Are we executing with great attention to detail? Are we having a sense of urgency and purpose with what we’re doing? That can be at (every position) because we want to continue evaluating our players.”
In his repetitions as first-team right tackle, Chiefs Wire’s Wesley Roesch noted that Christian kept third-year DE Mike Danna contained multiple times. Roesch said Christian did struggle with rookie DE George Karlaftis once on a spin move.
Carlos Dunlap making his presence felt
Carlos Dunlap continues to see his practice repetitions increase as the team ramps up his workload. He worked primarily with the second-team defense against the second-team offense on Sunday. His natural abilities seem to significantly outmatch that of the second-team offensive line.
The Athletic’s Nate Taylor noted that Dunlap had his way with the second-team offensive line, notching at least one would-be sack on Chad Henne.
Carlos Dunlap is wrecking the 2nd-team offense, just finished a rep that you could project as a sack of Chad Henne.
— Nate Taylor (@ByNateTaylor) August 7, 2022
As Dunlap learns more and more about the defensive scheme and playbook, you can expect him to earn more time with the first-team defense. Perhaps after this performance, the coaching staff will give him more time to work opposite Frank Clark.
Mecole Hardman, Trent McDuffie stack good days
A pair of Chiefs players on opposite sides of the ball continued to stack good days of practice.
Mecole Hardman had one of the standout plays of Saturday’s practice. He followed that performance up by being one of the standout players on what was mostly a forgettable practice session from the starting offense. Hardman had a few great plays in the 11-on-11 long-drive period, but he also had this catch in 1-on-1 against rookie CB Joshua Williams.
.@mecolehardman4 😮💨😮💨😮💨 pic.twitter.com/VWY57jNHoP
— Kansas City Chiefs (@Chiefs) August 7, 2022
Another player stacking good practices was first-round CB Trent McDuffie. Earlier in training camp, McDuffie struggled with the length of some of the Chiefs’ receivers, but he’s playing much better against it now. He let Marquez Valdes-Scantling out-muscle him on a very similar play to the one below, but this time around McDuffie laid out to ensure that the pass did not reach its intended target.
McDuffie PBU pic.twitter.com/EA1pxjgIAf
— KC Sports Network (@KCSportsNetwork) August 7, 2022
