Kansas City Chiefs: Post-Draft 53-Man Roster Prediction

Linebacker

Made the Cut: Dorian O’Daniel, Ben Niemann, Anthony Hitchens, Damien Wilson, Darron Lee, Gary Johnson

Notable Snubs: Reggie Ragland, Jeremiah Attaochu, Robert McCray

This linebacker group was tough, but in a different way as some of the rest of the position groups. At linebacker, right off the top, I have Darron Lee starting out of position.

Darron Lee is actually a weakside linebacker, but so are Dorian O’Daniel and Ben Niemann and guys like Damien Wilson and Gary Johnson will likely fit more naturally as weakside linebackers as well, so I just put the best three linebackers in the starting spots.

That’s five weakside linebackers if you were counting and the only other player that I had making the 53-man roster is Anthony Hitchens, who is more of a middle linebacker. So it is obvious the Chiefs are wanting smaller, more mobile linebackers who won’t be a liabilities in coverage situations.

Again, I went with the three best linebackers as the starters regardless of position. Maybe the Chiefs will let Hitchens run the strongside linebacker and put Lee and O’Daniel at middle and weakside linebacker, but no matter where they start these look like the three best linebackers.

With so many weakside linebackers and so few middle and outside linebackers, someone is likely going to have to start a little out of position. They will spend a lot of time in nickel packages anyways and O’Daniel and Lee will probably be the main linebackers in those formations.

The biggest snub in this group is Ragland.

Ragland is a guy who has shown promise at times, but for the most part, has not lived up to his potential. Unless this changes, his time with the Chiefs could be coming to an end. The one thing that could save him, other than obviously having a great offseason, is the apparent abundance of weakside linebackers and lack of middle and strongside linebackers that was mentioned above.