How Kansas City Chiefs can replace Juan Thornhill for playoffs

Juan Thornhill tore his ACL in week 17 and will now miss the rest of the season. How will the Kansas City Chiefs replace their rookie safety?

The Kansas City Chiefs went into Week 17 with what was apparently not much to play for. With the New England Patriots only needing to beat the Miami Dolphins to secure the two seed in the AFC, many people were asking just why the Chiefs weren’t sitting their starters.

The decision to play the one’s against a feisty Los Angeles Chargers squad ended up being the right move, as the Dolphins pulled off one of the biggest upsets in 30 years and knocked off New England in Foxborough. This, coupled with a Chiefs win, vaulted Kansas City into the second seed and gave them a first round bye in the AFC Playoffs.

The news wasn’t all great, however, as the Chiefs lost Juan Thornhill for the playoff run to a torn ACL.

Thornhill was one of the Chiefs’ two second round selections in April, and was at this point in the season a rookie in title alone. After playing 16 games, most NFL vets agree the “rookie” status has been shed and that was evident with the play of Juan Thornhill.

He had made leaps and bounds since training camp and paired with Tyrann Mathieu to be one of the better safety duos in the league. Replacing him will not be easy, but there is a couple different things the Chiefs can do to mitigate the blow of seeing Thornhill go down.

On this week’s episode of the KC KIngdom Podcast, we talk about this and so much more. We not only cover how the Chiefs can replace Thornhill, but we give a little shout out to our friends down in Miami, survey the AFC Playoff landscape, and cover everything we saw and liked (and disliked) in the Week 17 contest against the Chargers.

Give us a listen below, or if you aren’t interested in that, continue reading for my thoughts on replacing Thornhill.

The first step in replacing Thornhill is to recognize that you can’t actually replace him. When a player goes down, it is very rare for the player sitting behind him to be able to step in and do the same exact things that the injured player did.

Realizing this, you now have to put different players in the best situations to succeed using their skill set. The three key players we are going to look at is Daniel Sorensen, Kendall Fuller, and Armani Watts.

Firstly, let’s take a look at Dirty Dan. I get the sentiment from fans both online and the ones that I know that Sorensen is a liability. That generally isn’t the case.

Sorenson may not be an athletic freak by any means, but he is a solid veteran prescience that has been providing decent play on the back end. Sorensen is key here because the Chiefs absolutely do not want to disturb Tyrann Mathieu in his current role, so they need someone who has seen the field a ton already to take over what Thornhill has been doing. Sorensen can provide run support from the safety position, allowing Mathieu to do his thing and roam the field.

The next player that is going to be called upon is Kendall Fuller. In recent weeks, Fuller has been taking snaps at safety. This started to be prominent in the Bears game, well before Thornhill went down, and carried over into the last game of the year.

This is important because like Fuller, Thornhill used to be a corner, and was asked to handle a bunch of different coverage aspects. This is where Fuller and Sorensen mesh well together. Both of them can combine to do what Thornhill was doing well. It will be up to defensive coordinator Steve Spagbuolo to be ahead of the game and use both as needed.

The Chiefs also like to play three safety looks a lot. This is why Armani Watts will be important.

There will be plays where the Chiefs roll with Charvarius Ward, Bashaud Breeland, and Kendall Fuller back at corner. Mathieu would be in his role doing whatever the Honey Badger does on any given play (rushing the passer, manning up a receiver, etc).) and Sorensen will be used as a linebacker/safety hybrid in case of the run or to cover a running back out of the backfield.

That will leave Watts in at his safety position. Watts is actually a player I liked a lot as a rookie last year before his injury, and he had potential to be the Chiefs number two safety this year before the team drafted Thornhill.

Plain and simple, losing a guy this late in the year is never ideal, especially when it was someone who has helped improve the defense from laughing stock to nightmare fuel for NFL offenses.

It will be interesting to see if Spags is more creative in how he replaces the production of Thornhill, but from a basic standpoint, these three players will need to step it up in order for this defense to continue humming along in the playoffs.