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Kansas City Chiefs: Top five draft picks of the last decade

Kansas City Chiefs Travis Kelce (Photo by Jamie Squire/Getty Images)
Kansas City Chiefs Travis Kelce (Photo by Jamie Squire/Getty Images) /
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Quarterback Patrick Mahomes #15 of the Kansas City Chiefs (Photo by Peter G. Aiken/Getty Images)
Quarterback Patrick Mahomes #15 of the Kansas City Chiefs (Photo by Peter G. Aiken/Getty Images) /

NUMBER ONE

Patrick Mahomes II, Quarterback, Round 1, Pick 10, Texas Tech, 2017

Were you expecting someone else?

When the Chiefs traded up to draft Patrick Mahomes with the tenth overall pick on draft day in 2017, my phone lit up with excited messages from my brother-in-law. Of all the Chiefs fans I knew, he was the only one telling me that the Chiefs needed to take Mahomes, that the Chiefs needed to do whatever they could do to grab the big-armed, nimble Red Raider.

I scoffed at this. They had a quarterback.

Sure, Alex Smith isn’t ever going to be enshrined in Canton, but there have been teams that won a Super Bowl with that type of quarterback under center. The Chiefs could use that 27th overall pick on a pass-rusher like T.J. Watt or shore up the secondary with the likes of Budda Baker or TreDavious White.

Why fix what isn’t broken when you can fix what is broken?

Turns out, my brother-in-law was right: the Chiefs needed to take Mahomes.

Having Mahomes sit and learn from Smith in 2017 paid huge dividends. For one, Mahomes did exactly that: he sat, observed, and learned from Smith, one of the league’s more cerebral quarterbacks. As an added bonus, Smith played extremely well, enabling the Chiefs to deal him to Washington after the end of the season for Kendall Fuller and draft ammunition.