The Chiefs got good value for their 2025 draft picks

Once again, Kansas City GM Brett Veach reached on only a couple of his selections.

With the weekend’s NFL Draft behind us, let’s take a closer look at which teams reached on their picks — or got the most value from them.

We can do this by subtracting each player’s overall pick number from their pre-draft prospect ranking — in this case, from Arrowhead Pride’s consensus prospect rankings. The resulting reach value tells us whether the team obtained good value from the pick (a negative number) or reached past the player’s value (a positive number).

Then, by averaging the values for each team’s selections, we can see which franchises got the best value from their draft picks in Green Bay.

As you can see, the Kansas City Chiefs got the second-best perceived value from the past weekend’s draft picks

We call this perceived value because we compare players’ draft positions to where outside NFL analysts expected them to be taken. Through the first five rounds of the draft, a consensus draft prospect ranking tends to track with what teams actually do; on average, team evaluations track fairly well with those from the outside. In a draft’s final rounds, however, the average reach value tends to take a big jump, because there is a much wider variance between team and outside evaluations.

So, how did teams compare during those rounds?

We see that in the first five rounds, where we can depend on our pre-draft respect rankings a little more, the Chiefs ranked sixth.

A year ago, Kansas City ranked first in both rankings. In the 2023 draft, the Chiefs ranked 24th through seven rounds and 17th through the first three. In 2022, the Chiefs ranked sixth overall, but fifth through the first three rounds.

Here’s how the Chiefs did with all of this year’s picks:

In the 2024 draft, general manager Brett Veach got excellent perceived value on five of his picks, reaching on just two of them. In this draft, he had moderate reaches on two picks, was close to expectation on another, got good value on two selections — and fantastic value on two more.

The bottom line

Remember: it’s always a mistake to draw too many conclusions immediately after a draft.

The real measure of how Kansas City navigated the 2025 iteration of the league’s selection meeting will ultimately be found in how these new players perform in the coming seasons — and whether the team continues its dynasty.

But at this moment, this is the best kind of analysis we can make: comparing what we expected to happen with what did happen.

Even then, there’s no way to know how our consensus prospect ranking compares to how the Chiefs (or any other team) graded these players. For all we know, Veach was always taking the best player on his board.

So while we can’t yet say exactly how well Kansas City navigated this draft, our first impression is once again very good.