B+
Kansas City Chiefs
The Chiefs turned the phones into found money: B+.
by CheeseBurger Fat Man ·
2026 NFL Draft
· 14 picks
· 3 steals
· 6 reaches
If you want a masterclass in dealing, watch the Chiefs, who turned every swap into a profit this weekend. Good, not great, and the B+ says as much.
If Elarms-Orr pans out, nobody remembers the price. If not, this is the pick they hear about. Ponds falling to them is the kind of break a good board is built to catch.
The Ponds pick reads as want over need, and the roster will feel it at edge rusher. They covered a lot of ground and still skipped edge rusher, which is a strange place to end up.
A competent weekend that does not make headlines and does not need to.
Pick-by-Pick
In the 12th pick they get a lockdown presence outside at fair value.
In slot 29 they get a go-to option on the outside at fair value. It fills the loudest need on the roster.
Emmanuel Pregnon at the Round 2 slot is a sound buy, the sort that quietly helps a class. Better still, it is exactly the hole they had to fill.
A curious use of No. 74. Edge rusher needed the pick; a cornerback in D'Angelo Ponds did not.
Value with a capital V on Mike Washington Jr. in pick No. 92, a genuine coup. A real hole, addressed with a reasonable pick.
They reached into another round for Kaleb Proctor, and the board is nowhere close to agreeing. The roster fit checks out.
Jack Endries at pick 110 is a conviction pick that outran the value. They walked in needing this and walked out with it.
J.C. Davis at Round 4, Pick 12 is the pick scouts circle, and not in a good way. A glaring weakness, addressed head on.
No edge and no loss on Malik Benson in pick 148; it is a wash and a sensible one. Top of the wish list, and they did not leave without it.
A big swing on Kaleb Elarms-Orr at the Round 5 slot, well ahead of any board in the building. A need, and now a little less of one.
They talked themselves into DJ Campbell at slot 169, and the board did not agree. It also answers one of the loudest questions on the roster.
They left a pile of value on the table to take Eric McAlister this early at the 176th pick. The one spot they could not leave alone, and did not.
A slide stopped in Round 6, Pick 29, with Cole Payton worth more than the price. It shores up a spot that genuinely needed the help.
A straight-up fair deal on Bobby Jamison-Travis at No. 221, value and slot in agreement. It plugs a real leak on the depth chart.