Kansas City Chiefs: All-Decade Team for 2010s
2010S ALL-DECADE TEAM – DEFENSIVE END
STARTERS: CHRIS JONES, ALLEN BAILEY
ALTERNATE: JAYE HOWARD
At defensive end, the Chiefs have three solid options to take the field should the all-decade team take the field and actually play a real game.
Since being selected by the Chiefs in the second round of the 2016 NFL Draft out of Mississippi State, Chris Jones has appeared in 60 games, starting 40 of them. In that time, he’s collected a total of 32 sacks, including a whopping 15.5 last season and an even 8.0 this year. Jones has also racked up 134 combined tackles, 36 tackles for loss, and 70 QB hits, so he’s a no brainer to be one of the defensive ends on this team.
Next up is Allen Bailey, who would spend the first eight seasons of his career with the Chiefs. In those eight seasons, Bailey collected 19.5 sacks for the Chiefs, including a career-high 6.0 sacks in 2018, while gathering 34 tackles for loss and 33 QB hits.
Bailey was never a star for the Chiefs, but he was always an underappreciated member of a defense that continuously struggled, starting 61 games of the 102 in which he appeared between 2011 and 2018, so naturally, he’s a great starter to have on defense as well.
The alternate is Jaye Howard, who joined the Chiefs in 2013. He’d play a total of four seasons in Kansas City, starting 30 of the 42 games in which he donned a Chiefs uniform.
During his tenure, which ended after the 2016 season, he collected only 7.5 sacks with 5.5 of those coming in 2015. That year proved to be Howard’s best, as he collected a combined 57 tackles to go with 11 tackles for loss and nine QB hits.
These three were all lethal at their prime (which fortunately for Chiefs fans, is right now for Jones), and that’s why we picked them as the three defensive ends.
2010S ALL-DECADE TEAM – NOSE TACKLE
STARTER: DONTARI POE
ALTERNATE: DERRICK NNADI
At nose tackle, it was pretty simple. Dontari Poe won the starting job after spending half of the decade with the Chiefs. KC spent their first round pick on Poe in 2012 and it was a bit of a curious decision at the time, as Poe played at Memphis and wasn’t a big name coming into the draft.
He shut up the critics pretty quickly though, making it to two Pro Bowls during his Chiefs tenure and also becoming a staple on offense. He ran for two touchdowns (Hungry Pig Right) and also threw for a touchdown pass (Bloated Tebow Pass), clearly making him a force to be reckoned with on offense.
While Poe was great, the drop-off was apparent near the end of his five-year deal and the Chiefs decided to move on. Their eventual replacement for Poe came two years later and it’s Derrick Nnadi, who has been a nice draft pick by the team.
While Nnadi is getting the job done currently, if you put him in his prime against Poe in his prime, Poe would definitely win the starting job for the all-decade team.