The Kansas City Chiefs exited Saturday afternoon's preseason opener having accomplished one major achievement. The team remained healthy. Clearly, Kansas City put an emphasis on playing guys who needed the snaps, as major players like Patrick Mahomes, Travis Kelce, and Mansoor Delane didn't even see the field, while Chris Jones, Kenneth Walker III, and George Karlaftis played five combined snaps.
The Chiefs' other first-round rookie, Peter Woods, however, saw elongated time as the Chiefs' main three-tech defensive tackle. Woods logged 25 snaps, equating to 46% of the defensive plays. What has some Chiefs fans concerned is what he did with those opportunities. Or rather, what he didn't do.
The former Clemson Tiger failed to record anything on the stat sheet. No sacks, tackles, or forced fumbles. Not so much as a quarterback pressure. And worse, Woods, despite being a stocky and strong 310-pounder, got pushed back a little too easily on some run downs.
It's so easy to overreact to everything that happened in the Chiefs' 20-12 loss yesterday, good and bad. So let's not go overboard with the damning discourse on a rookie who has barely dipped his toes in the waters of the NFL.
The Peter Woods hype train is still in full swing despite fruitless NFL debut
Woods, by all accounts, has been a wrecking ball in Chiefs training camp. That's just a fact. He has stacked days, and now weeks, of really good football together against his teammates, going up against some of the best interior linemen in all of football, including Creed Humphrey and Trey Smith.
Perhaps this preseason opener should slow down the hype for anybody who believed Woods is in line for double-digit sacks this season. That is an expectation far beyond what any rookie defensive lineman should be asked to do.
But 25 "meh" plays in a game that doesn't matter and where the Chiefs are running their most vanilla concepts versus what is now dozens of "wow" plays in camp when the Chiefs are expanding the entire playbook is a two-sided scale I know where I land.
I'll choose to trust the professional coaches and Woods' peers along the d-line, like Jones and Karlaftis, who continue to praise the 21-year-old. All the first-rounder needs to worry about is getting a little better every day. And when he's lined up next to guys like Khyiris Tonga and Chris Jones, who will eat up double teams for him to pass-rush one-on-one, Woods will have the advantage, and based on what we've seen and heard from training camp, he'll make it count.
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