The reigning Super Bowl champion Kansas City Chiefs aren’t really worried too much about the past at the moment. This is a franchise on its way to becoming the NFL’s modern dynasty after winning yet another championship during the 2022 season with no end to its reign over the rest of the NFL in sight. Still, there have been some players throughout the Chiefs’ history that the team let get away way too soon.
Sometimes in the NFL, you just never know what’s going to happen when you let a player go after their rookie contract runs its course, but for the Kansas City Chiefs, there are a few notable names they maybe wish they had handled differently.
Let’s take a look at the three biggest mistakes the Kansas City Chiefs have made in terms of players they gave up on way too soon.
3 players the Kansas City Chiefs gave up on way too soon
3. Rodney Hudson, Center
You can’t keep everybody.
Every offseason, teams are faced with difficult decisions and really “risks” if you want to call them that when it comes to players they let hit free agency. The Chiefs had Rodney Hudson for four seasons and they decided to save the big money he was about to command in free agency as opposed to giving him a long-term deal.
The Chiefs were certainly right that Hudson would command a huge market when he left. He signed a five-year, $44.5 million deal. Everyone would have been happy for Rodney except for the fact that he signed with a division rival — the Raiders.
The Raiders got what they paid for — absolutely elite-level center play. Hudson made the Pro Bowl three times and was named a second-team All-Pro in the 2019 season. The Kansas City Chiefs aren’t still wiping up any tears in the aftermath of this move. They currently have one of the best centers in the game in Creed Humphrey. But letting go of Rodney Hudson may not have been the wisest decision at the time and clearly they “gave up” on him too soon.
2. Joe Horn, wide receiver
Before he pulled out a cell phone in one of the most famous touchdown celebrations in NFL history, wide receiver Joe Horn was a member of the Kansas City Chiefs. We need players to bring back fun celebrations like that again, by the way.
But believe it or not, you could see Joe Horn running routes for the Kansas City Chiefs for the first four years of his NFL career, and they obviously weren’t the most memorable. In four seasons with the Chiefs, Joe Horn caught 53 passes for 879 yards. Most of that production came in his final season in Kansas City, which prompted the New Orleans Saints to offer Horn a pretty lucrative deal in free agency.
He signed with the Saints for four years, $9.9 million. On that four-year contract, Joe Horn became a big-time star in the NFL.
In his first four seasons with the Saints, Joe Horn had 4,890 receiving yards and 34 touchdowns on 343 receptions. He would go on to start 100 games for the Saints in total where he would become one of the best receivers in franchise history, catching 523 passes for 7,622 yards and 50 touchdowns.
In the early 2000s, Joe Horn was that dude.
He was a four-time Pro Bowl selection for the Saints and became their 4th all-time leading receiver.
Given his production over the course of his first four seasons with the Chiefs, it’s understandable that Kansas City let him hit free agency. But maybe it was the Chiefs Joe Horn was calling during that touchdown celebration to let them know what they were missing.
1. Jared Allen, defensive end
There can be only one player that reigns above the rest among players the Kansas City Chiefs gave up on way too soon.
That player is none other than Jared Allen.
The Chiefs selected Allen in the fourth round of the 2004 NFL Draft, and he quickly became a household name. He finished fifth in the NFL in Defensive Rookie of the Year voting after racking up nine sacks and 10 tackles for loss in his first 15 NFL games.
Allen averaged 11 sacks per year over his first four seasons in the NFL with Kansas City, along with 10 QB hits and 14 tackles for loss. He had 26 passes batted in his first four NFL seasons along with 14 forced fumbles. This guy was a menace, and he was better in his fourth NFL season before he hit free agency than in any other. He had a career-best 15.5 sacks that season, being named first-team All-Pro and being selected to his first Pro Bowl.
The Kansas City Chiefs couldn’t work out a long-term contract with Allen, inexplicably, and they traded him to the Vikings for a king’s ransom of picks at the time. Even though the Chiefs got some good picks back in exchange for Jared Allen, he became an even more dominant force as a member of the Minnesota Vikings.
Allen averaged 14 sacks per season with the Vikings and had 16 forced fumbles over the course of 96 games in which he was named a first-team All-Pro three times. He was almost annually a Defensive MVP candidate. He made four Pro Bowls.
From 2008-2013, Jared Allen was one of the league’s best defensive players regardless of position and the Chiefs certainly could have used him, especially at the beginning of the Peyton Manning era in Denver when KC had some underrated competitive teams.
Unfortunately for the Kansas City Chiefs, Jared Allen will be going down as one of the best players in Minnesota Vikings history.