The Kansas City Chiefs won’t have an opportunity to select players in the NFL’s supplemental draft in 2020.
The league has decided to forego the supplemental draft this season according to a new report from NFL Network’s Tom Pelissero. Under the Collective Bargaining Agreement, the supplemental draft isn’t an automatic occurrence each year. The league can elect to hold it or cancel it. According to Pelissero’s report, the NFL’s Management Council Executive Committee discussed holding a supplemental draft, but ultimately they determined it was in the league’s best interest to skip it this year.
Many believed the NFL would see an influx of players applying to enter the NFL’s supplemental draft this year due to the COVID-19 pandemic. The NFL quickly squashed the idea that they’d allow more entrants than usual. Now it seems their decision to forego the supplemental draft will absolve the league of any controversy surrounding who would be permitted to enter the draft.
The Chiefs have been active over the past few years when it comes to checking out supplemental draft players, but they’ve not drafted one. In fact, Kansas City has only once selected a player in the supplemental draft, which occurred in 1992. Carl Peterson took Florida Gators defensive end Darren Mickell, using a second-round draft pick. Mickell only played with the team for four seasons. He was ultimately traded away because his production didn’t match what was expected of a second-round pick.
As the reigning Super Bowl champions, the Chiefs would have had a low lottery number in the supplemental draft. That would have impacted their ability to select a player had the league decided to hold a supplemental draft. Still, it would have been nice to have the option to draft a player, especially given the news surrounding Chris Jones and a potential season-long holdout.
