Chiefs QB Battle Is Officially Over After Friday's Preseason Game

There are very few guarantees in a sport like the NFL when it comes to locking down a spot on the depth chart before training camp even begins.

Kansas City Chiefs fans know as well as anyone that incumbent starters have a leg up in any competitions throughout camp, but at the end of the day, this is a what have you done for me lately type of league. Current abilities will almost always outweigh past accomplishments.

Friday night, Kansas City completed its second of three exhibition games this season, and one player has done enough for fans to officially declare him the winner of this training camp battle and the right to be the primary backup to Patrick Mahomes.

Chiefs' Gardner Minshew Ends QB Battle After 2nd Preseason Game

While most fans and pundits had assumed the backup QB job would be Gardner Minshew's to lose, he still had to go out there and get the job done before being tabbed as the No. 2 in Kansas City to Mahomes. Friday night, the former Washington State Cougars standout did just that, going 7/9 for 70 yards passing and the pretty touchdown pass to Robert Tonyan shown in the video clip above.

Ideally, Minshew would see the field this coming season in nothing more than mop-up duty or in a relatively meaningless Week 18 game after the Chiefs had, hopefully, locked up the AFC West crown. That is a different prediction for another time, however.

What is important today is that Minshew looks like he has locked up the position. With that all but decided on at this point, the battle for who will be the team's 3rd-string QB, assuming Kansas City keeps three on the roster, will come down to Bailey Zappe and Chris Oladokun.

Given that the two only combined to throw for 40 total yards on 7/11 passing, Friday night's preseason game did not tell fans much about the pecking order on the depth chart behind Minshew. This will be a battle worth focusing on for the next two weeks.

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