Will the Chiefs eye a left tackle in the ’25 draft? Here’s what Brett Veach says
On Black Friday last year, with the Chiefs and Raiders reserved for a national TV audience, quarterback Patrick Mahomes slammed a football between his hands and angrily unfastened his chin strap before yelling toward the sideline.
He’d just been sacked on a fourth-and-goal snap, but that alone didn’t trigger him. This did: It was mixed into a day in which he was pressured 20 times, more frequently than any game during the year.
He’d had enough.
That, as it turns out, was a sequence perfectly symbolic of the Chiefs’ 2024 season, a team whose ceiling was frequently lowered by the turnstile at left tackle.
It’s still the story in 2025.
After cycling through four players to protect the blindside of Mahomes a year ago, the Chiefs are all but certain to ask someone new to handle the job this fall.
The most logical, if not obvious, choice is incoming free agent Jaylon Moore, whom the Chiefs signed to a two-year, $30 million pact last month. They spent more money on Moore than any other incoming free agent. So he’s the guy, right?
Well.
Probably.
Chiefs general manager Brett Veach held his annual pre-draft meeting with media Thursday, and maybe it takes some reading between the lines, but his message seemed clear enough:
Left tackle is on the Chiefs’ board.
And it’s high on their board.
It should be.
“I think obviously, any chance that you have to draft a guy that can project to be a starting left tackle, you do that,” Veach said. “They’re really hard to come by.”
The last several years — the post-Eric Fisher years, if you will — illustrate that point, even if it’s something the Chiefs already knew.
The free agency cupboard is bare. It’s why the Titans paid $82 million for a player who allowed literally the most sacks in football last year. It’s why you give a two-year, $30 million contract to a career backup, in hopes he can be a diamond in the rough. Or in hopes he can at least be something the Chiefs didn’t have a year ago.
A serviceable option.
That’s the bar. Sure, you’d like to find an All-Pro or Pro Bowler. But the reaction by Mahomes that led off this column? It came after Wanya Morris had just flat-out whiffed on a block.
I’d say I’d never seen that before — a complete whiff — except that we had seen it just a couple of months earlier, from another left tackle at GEHA Field at Arrowhead Stadium: Chiefs rookie Kingsley Suamataia.
I’ve pointed out the value of the tackles in front of Mahomes in comparison to the value of the interior offensive linemen. But if you missed that, the gist is that Mahomes deals with interior pressure far better than he does rushers from the edge.
Which is logical. He can see, and therefore adjust, to what’s in front of him.
Moore is a hopeful solution. At least slow the other guy down, right? The Chiefs liked what they saw from him when the 49ers asked him to fill in for All-Pro Trent Williams in San Francisco.
But Moore is not going to be a guy who keeps the Chiefs from shopping for the position.
He can’t be.
The Chiefs have been stuck in this never-ending cycle on the left side of their offensive line. They started four tackles last year, one of them guard Joe Thuney. A year before, Donovan Smith manned the spot, along with Morris. They followed Orlando Brown Jr.
That’s six options in three seasons.
It’s not a comfortable spot, squarely in this market annually. But it’s not like this is the Chiefs’ preference, either.
This is precisely why, if a starting-caliber left tackle — based on their own scouting — falls deeper into the first round than expected, they still ought to pounce. It doesn’t matter that they reserved $30 million this offseason for a solution (we can add here that right tackle Jawaan Taylor is likely entering his final year in Kansas City, given his cap number in 2026).
Yes, the notion that a good tackle might fall is a big if.
More than half of the NFL’s starting tackles last season were picked in the top 20. That’s barely a lower rate than quarterbacks. The Chiefs haven’t picked in the top 20 since 2017.
That was the Mahomes pick, by the way, at No. 10.
Since then, it’s been 21 or later. Every year.
That’s why the solution hasn’t come easy. It comes to literally most teams on the heels of a below-average year. The Chiefs don’t have those.
“Look, you could hit on any position throughout the course of the draft, but consistently, those slam-dunk franchise tackles are typically top-15, top-20 picks,” Veach said. “So if one does slide, or if you’re able to get one even in later rounds that you think has a higher upside than some of those prospects in past years, you don’t ever shy away from that position.”
The later rounds. Let’s talk more about that, too.
The Chiefs have tried that route recently and frequently. It was Suamataia in the second round last year, Morris in the third round in 2023, Darian Kinnard in the fifth in 2021 and Lucas Niang in the third in 2020.
Those four players have combined for nine NFL seasons but just 1,181 snaps at left tackle (with Morris responsible for 1,015 of them in the last two years).
That’s a bad track record.
But the Chiefs have to keep throwing darts, not step away from the board.
I’m not advocating they force the issue. I’m advocating that relative comfort with this year’s solution — Moore at left tackle, Taylor at right — shouldn’t prompt them to overlook the bigger picture. Because that bigger picture is a murky, uncomfortable state.
Some intriguing possibilities are projected to remain available in the late first or early second round. Aireontae Ersery, a Ruskin High graduate, is a projected early second-rounder. He looks the part of a guy who will be able to contribute.
The most popular mock draft pick for the Chiefs is Josh Conerly Jr., an Oregon product. About 15% of mock drafts have him landing in Kansas City, per the NFL Mock Draft database.
And then there’s Ohio State’s Josh Simmons. If it wasn’t for his injury history, he’d likely be in the conversation for candidates to become the top left tackle off the board Thursday.
But he suffered a knee injury last October. If teams deem him healthy, he’s long gone by 31. If they don’t, well, you’re absorbing quite a risk on a first-round pick.
That’s how this position rolls. It’s not quarterback, but it’s a position with nearly as much scarcity, and one that perhaps trails only QB in importance. Those two things are related.
So is the draft.
All teams are aware of the numbers and aware of the difficulty of acquiring a quality left tackle.
The Chiefs have lived it. They still are living it.
They can throw another dart next week.
This story was originally published April 18, 2025 at 5:30 AM with the headline "Will the Chiefs eye a left tackle in the ’25 draft? Here’s what Brett Veach says."