When the Kansas City Chiefs signed former Tampa Bay Buccaneers LT Donovan Smith, it cast doubt over everything fans had been told about the plan at offensive tackle this offseason.
Ever since the team signed former Jacksonville Jaguars RT Jawaan Taylor at the onset of free agency, they’d been peddling the plan to move Taylor to the left side. That plan seemingly changed after the draft when the team added Smith, with Andy Reid saying it’d allow the Chiefs to leave Taylor at right tackle.
With a week of OTAs in the books, we’re learning now that few things are set in stone at the offensive tackle position. Not only did Reid confirm that Taylor had a “few practices” playing left tackle, but he also confirmed that Lucas Niang is in the mix at the right tackle position.
“Yeah, so for the few practices that he (Jawaan Taylor) was at left tackle (and) then (Lucas) Niang worked in at the right tackle, I feel good about (Niang) too, so we’re in a good place,” Reid said. “I believe (Taylor) can do both so I don’t think that’s a problem and he got a few snaps at that. But listen, we’ve got two veteran guys (Donovan Smith and Jawaan Taylor) that have a lot of snaps under their belt at a high level so we feel comfortable with that so we’ll see. We expect the guys behind them to compete and we should be fine there.”
Having confidence in your depth certainly isn’t a bad thing as Chiefs fans learned in the Super Bowl LV debacle. OTAs serve as a good opportunity to experiment and find out what your players might be capable of once the pads come on at training camp. No matter what, the mixed signals sent by the team confirm that they’re still figuring out which combination of starting offensive tackles will give them the best opportunity to win games come the 2023 NFL season.
