Kansas City Chiefs: Taco Charlton release disappointing but not surprising

Taco Charlton getting cut from the Kansas City Chiefs was disappointing to see, but it isn’t a huge surprise.

Many Kansas City Chiefs fans were shocked on Monday when defensive end Taco Charlton was among the five players cut from the roster.

Prior to training camp, the consensus was Charlton was solidly in the mix to contribute at defensive end for the Kansas City Chiefs this coming season. With the overall lack of depth at defensive end at one point and questions surrounding the position, many people were tuning to Charlton as someone who could help out.

While Charlton only played 8% of the defensive snaps last season for the Kansas City Chiefs, he showed to be an efficient pass-rusher and ended up with a couple sacks, seven combined tackles, and a forced fumble.

Charlton finally seemed to be reaching his potential with the Chiefs before unfortunately breaking his leg in week 9 of last year versus the Carolina Panthers.

Charlton was a prime candidate to come back even better after settling into the Chiefs locker room and defensive coordinator Steve Spagnuolo’s system for another offseason. To see him go now just feels a little odd. Charlton could have done some damage.

Plus, everyone enjoys rooting for a career resurgence story, which would fit with Charlton considering his career up to this point.

Taco Charlton’s release from the Kansas City Chiefs shouldn’t come as a shock

However, Charlton’s release isn’t really a major surprise if you’ve been paying close attention.

I don’t think anyone wanted to admit it as Charlton seems to be universally liked, but he hadn’t been doing anything notable in training camp or in the preseason games and it appeared he’d been held out frequently from drills.

That could be because of injury.

It’s worth wondering if the injury from last year was still acting as a hindrance for Charlton and if the Chiefs didn’t want to deal with having yet another injury-riddled defensive end. Keep in mind Charlton has never played a full NFL season since entering the league in 2017.

The Chiefs would probably rather use the roster spot somewhere else whether that be along the defensive line in favor of a younger prospect or in another spot.

Charlton’s release is also probably dependent on the fact that the Chiefs have seen a lot of players rise to the occasion on the defensive line. Khalen Saunders, Mike Danna, and Tim Ward among others have made obvious strides while Charlton didn’t show much. You know what they say in this league, “If you aren’t getting better, you’re getting worse”.

That’s the reality in Charlton’s case. The defensive line just looks to be deeper than we thought a month or two ago and Charlton became a victim of the numbers game.

The release is unfortunate, though.

I think a lot of people were looking forward to another year of Charlton after getting healthy and learning the defense. It was reasonable to expect Charlton to compete for the two-deep after what we saw from him last year, but for whatever reason it just didn’t work out.