The Chiefs certainly haven't shied away from making major moves this offseason, overhauling an offensive line that was ultimately their undoing in last year's Super Bowl. Gone are Mitchell Schwartz and Eric Fisher -- two mainstays on the line in previous year. In are Joe Thuney, Kyle Long, Austin Blythe, and -- perhaps most importantly -- new left tackle Orlando Brown Jr. The trade was unquestionably the biggest move the team made over draft weekend, and on Friday morning, general manager Brett Veach called into 610's Fescoe In The Morning to detail how it all went down:
“Really for us it was just a lot of patience and surveying the landscape of teams and the draft," he said. "When the season ended, obviously we were going to allocate resources and upgrade the offensive line and we were determined to locate and identify an upgrade in regards to a high-end interior player and a high-end tackle and when free agency started we were able to knock Joe Thuney out of the park on Day 1. As you guys know, we made a run at Trent Williams and that didn’t work out. And I think where we really benefited was just our patience, and after we were unable to land Trent, there were certainly some other tackles out there, and we wanted to go younger and build some continuity. Trent Williams was a complete outlier because although he was older, he was such a complete player and his play had not fallen off at all, in our opinions. Again, just a complete outlier.
"We remained patient. I would say 2 or 3 weeks before the draft, we were going through exercises – going through the mock drafts, and who would be there at 31, and if we did trade up to get one of those tackles we thought could come in and start Day 1, what would that cost us? How many would be left? If we traded back, could we maybe get two of the younger developmental prospects? Maybe go that route. As we were working through that, the steam started to pick up a little with Orlando Brown. You know, obviously we were able to get that pulled off, and a little bit of luck was involved with that … it was a unique situation where they had a player, and it was well known that he wanted to play left tackle. They already had a left tackle that was coming back off injury.
“It was just one of those deals where a bunch of teams already had left tackles, and a bunch of teams that were drafting early had access to young left tackles. The Ravens had to find a specific team with a specific need at left tackle. I don’t think it was their desire to trade him to the Chiefs, but at the end of the day I thought it was the best opportunity for them, and obviously it was the best opportunity for us. So looking back on free agency, I think our staff did a really good job of remaining patient and not forcing the issue."
You can listen to the entire interview right here:
