When the Chiefs traded L’Jaruis Sneed to the Titans earlier this offseason, the club created a significant vacancy at cornerback.
Coming off an All-Pro season, 2022 first-round pick Trent McDuffie is a candidate to play on the outside more to help replace Sneed. But this week, defensive coordinator Steve Spagnuolo noted just how difficult it will be to fill in for the vacancy Sneed leaves behind.
“We’ll see. I don’t think anybody is going to replace LJ Sneed,” Spagnuolo said in his press conference, via transcript from the team. “I thought LJ had a remarkable year in everything that he did. There are some shoes there to fill, whether we do it with one person or two people or shift guys around, we’ll see.”
McDuffie had excelled at slot corner, so moving him outside to replace Sneed would create another hole to fill. Spagnuolo noted that Chamarri Conner and Nic Jones have played at slot so far during the offseason program.
“We have some young guys working in there,” Spagnuolo said. “Trent can always certainly slide back in. We haven’t put Justin Reid in there, but I’m not so sure if we got in a pinch in an emergency [that] we [couldn’t] do that, but it’s good to have versatile guys.”
Fortunately for the Chiefs, no firm decisions need to be made right now on the secondary.
“We have a long way to go to figure that out,” Spagnuolo said.
