Joe Thuney was a machine when the Chiefs needed one... now what?
Giving the now-former Chief his flowers, and pondering what the plan along the OL is for Kansas City.
Joe Thuney is gone from the Chiefs roster. That’s how fast life happens in the NFL.
One minute you’ve been named the team’s Most Valuable Player by your teammates and are being celebrated as “the definition of a team player”…
… the next you’re being traded for a 2026 4th round pick by that same team.
I (and many others) often come back to the cliche that the NFL is a business, and there’s a reason for that. Teams will always, without fail, do what is best for them in the long run. It doesn’t matter who the player is or what he’s done. The team does what it thinks is in its own best interests, even if that means trading a player who is playing at an All Pro level, is wildly popular in the locker room, and has been one of the cornerstones of the most successful era in franchise history. That’s the business.
A lot of fans want to talk about what’s next for the Chiefs along the offensive line, and that’s an important conversation I have a theory on. But first, I want to talk about Joe Thuney for a minute.
Joe Thuney is a machine.
He has been from the moment he joined the Chiefs. I could pick any from hundreds and hundreds of pass protection snaps of snaps over the last four seasons, and they’d all look somewhat similar. If Thuney was left “uncovered” (with no one in front of him directly to block), he would stay active and look for work, often managing to help both the center AND the left tackle while keeping his head on a swivel for late blitzers or stunting rushers. If it was a stunt/twist, he would perfectly pass it off and meet the player coming his way. And if he were on an island, it pretty much always ended the same way.
Here’s a snap I literally randomly picked out among pass pro snaps over multiple seasons.
(There’s something fitting about this being a TD to Travis Kelce, but I digress)
Watch Thuney here. He’s on an island against Ed Oliver, a very good pass rusher. Oliver tries to drive Thuney backwards and even shoves his left hand into Thuney’s facemask. Nothing doing, because Joe Thuney’s feet are perfectly positioned to resist power and actively resetting. Oliver tries to shift gears, swatting at Thuney’s hands while shifting his weight in an attempt to use Thuney’s leverage against him. To no avail, because Thuney keeps his balance while fighting back to knock loose Oliver’s arm. Oliver then tries to just book it upfield to maybe get around Thuney… but that doesn’t work either, because Thuney is too under control and just delivers a shove.
Throughout the entire rep, Oliver never comes close to threatening Mahomes in the pocket.
If you were to turn on basically any random rep in any random game over the last four years, you’d see the same story. The hands, the feet, the balance, the technique… it was always the same. Snap after snap after snap. Drive after drive after drive. Game after game after game. Year after year after year. As the player to his left rotated, as the offensive scheme changed around him, as the opponents cycled in and out… Joe Thuney was the same every time. A machine in a man’s body, playing perfect pass protection for the best quarterback in the world. Over and over and over.
It’s easy to forget now, but the Chiefs needed a machine in 2021.