For the third time in the Andy Reid era, a familiar and frustrating pattern has played out in Kansas City: develop a star cornerback, then ship him out of town just as he’s hitting his prime. As the Chiefs traded Trent McDuffie to the LA Rams, one co-host of a popular podcast turned to the head coach with a reality check. 

“The Chiefs, they do not pay cornerbacks. They do a great job drafting cornerbacks. They do a great job developing cornerbacks. And then they just don’t invest in them, man. They let them walk. They get compensation for some of them. Some of them, they just lose to free agency. That’s just how the Chiefs do. So I’m not surprised at all,” Gilbert Arenas, former NBA point guard and longtime partner/co-host of the Arena podcast, said on the show.

According to ESPN Senior NFL Insider Adam Schefter, the Chiefs received four draft picks via the McDuffie deal. The No. 29 overall pick, a fifth- and sixth-round pick in 2026, and a third-round pick in the 2027 draft. Huge deal! But it also signals a trend that has become impossible to look past inside the Chiefs organization.

It started with Marcus Peters. The Chiefs selected Peters with the 18th overall pick in 2015. In his rookie year, Peters led the entire league in interceptions with eight, interception return yards with 280, pick-sixes with two, and passes defended with 26. And he backed all of that up with back-to-back Pro Bowl selections in his first two seasons.

His final year in KC was no different. Peters again led the league in interception return yards with 137, while adding five interceptions, nine passes defended, and 46 tackles. Yet the Chiefs shipped him to the Rams in 2018, along with a sixth-round pick. In return, they received a fourth-round pick in the 2018 draft and a second-round pick in 2019.

Peters then signed a three-year, $42 million contract extension with the Ravens in 2019, a number the Chiefs clearly had no intention of matching. And just as that chapter closed, a new chapter began in KC.

L’Jarius Sneed entered the league as a fourth-round pick in the 2020 draft. In the 2022 season alone, he posted 108 tackles (75 solo) along with 3.5 sacks and five quarterback hits. He played in three Super Bowls and won two rings with the Chiefs (2022 and 2023).

When it came time for Sneed’s contract extension, the Chiefs first applied the franchise tag and then moved him in a trade to the Titans. They received a third-round pick for the 2025 draft and a 221st pick in the seventh round of the 2024 draft. Sneed went on to sign a four-year, $76.4 million extension with Tennessee. The Chiefs had drafted him, developed him, and handed him off for picks, exactly as they had done with Peters. And now, McDuffie.

The Chiefs selected him 21st overall in the 2022 draft. He played in three Super Bowls and won two of them as a starter. And yet the result was the same. That is exactly why co-host Skip Bayless, speaking on the same Arena podcast, pointed this out.

“This is the way the Chiefs have always done business. But do I agree with doing business this time with this player? I do not. And I don’t think Patrick Mahomes agreed either,” Bayless said.

The McDuffie trade was not well-received in the locker room. The locker room felt it immediately. Nobody inside the building truly wanted to make that call. But the numbers forced the hand.

The locker room responded to McDuffie’s trade, but what does Andy Reid do now?

When the news broke on March 4, the reaction from the team was immediate. Patrick Mahomes posted just one word on X: “Damn..” Xavier Worthy followed with a string of crying emojis and a drawn-out “noooooooooooooooo.” It was like the whole city froze for a moment, unable to process what just happened.

The reports confirmed what the reactions already showed. ESPN revealed that Andy Reid, GM Brett Veach, and Steve Spagnuolo did not want to trade McDuffie. But the Chiefs had no real choice with the cap sitting at $24.88 million, even after restructuring deals. 

So the Chiefs are shifting their focus to April. Veach made his intentions clear at the combine, where he addressed the direction of the franchise head-on.

“The last few years, we were kind of just, like, in a maintenance stage,” Veach said. “Now we’re trying to rebuild this thing again. I think for a GM and a personnel staff, that’s exciting.”

The Chiefs now hold multiple picks in the upcoming April draft, including the No. 9 and No. 29 overall selections. According to NFL analyst Luke Hubbard at EssentiallySports, one name generating serious traction as a potential target is LSU cornerback Mansoor Delane.

Delane is coming off a standout season, where he earned First-Team All-American honors after starting 11 games and recording 45 tackles, two interceptions, and 11 passes defended, capping the year with a Texas Bowl victory.

He fits the profile the Chiefs have always chased in the draft: a raw but highly coachable cornerback who can be built up inside Spagnuolo’s system.