And just as what they did with the picks was changing, who they’d be looking for with them was, too.

 And just as what they did with the picks was changing, who they’d be looking for with them was, too.

So the aforementioned number—nine of 10 draft picks played in both the Chiefs’ playoff games—isn’t something the team, any team, could have planned for in March. But by summer, they saw signs that

 it was coming. And that it was resulting from an effort to emphasize high-character players after hitting on such prospects, guys like Creed Humphrey and Nick Bolton in 2021.

Also, as Veach saw it, it was another example of the team shifting its aggression, in this case from being aggressive with risks when Mahomes’s rookie deal gave them margin for error roster-wise, to being aggressive in character evaluations with that margin mostly gone, and the team needing more often for rookies to play sooner.