The Chiefs' Cornerback Room Is More Intriguing Than You Think
Delane, Canady, Kohou and Sneed additions headline a deep and competitive group tasked with replacing seven years and $175 million worth of production.
The Kansas City Chiefs’ cornerback room does not get enough credit, and it probably will not until someone earns it on a Sunday in the fall. That is fair.
This is a group that lost Trent McDuffie and Jaylen Watson to the Los Angeles Rams this offseason, two cornerstones of the defense who combined for seven years and $175 million in new contracts. Replacing that kind of production is not a small task.
But the group assembled to do it is more interesting than the casual observer might think, and we can start with a familiar face, since he is the most recent addition.
L’Jarius Sneed is back in Kansas City, and the circumstances surrounding his return are worth understanding before drawing any conclusions. According to Over the Cap, Sneed signed a one-year deal worth $1.2 million in base value, with incentives that could push it north of $5 million.
There are exactly zero dollars in guaranteed money. That contract structure tells you everything about where things stand. This is a prove-it deal, and whether Sneed can hold up his end of it is what there is to monitor.
The concerns are real. After putting together an All-Pro caliber season with the Chiefs in 2023, Sneed played in just 12 games over the past two seasons with the Tennessee Titans. His knee issues are well-documented.
That said, if you want to take a glass-half-full approach, the Kansas City medical staff has a proven track record of managing Sneed’s knee, and he knows Steve Spagnuolo’s defense like the back of his hand. Andy Reid made clear after minicamp that he believes in where Sneed is physically.
“Yeah, I’m a big L’Jarius fan. I think you guys know that,” Reid said. “He’s a good football player. He says he feels healthy. He kind of went through some things in Tennessee health-wise. I think he’s in a good place there. You know, he’s a good person and good player. The guys, it was kind of neat to see the guys welcome him back in that know him. There’s so much change that goes on in this league, but you can really tell the guys that played with him were just very excited to have him back in the building here.”
It is also worth noting the versatility Sneed brings. He can play outside or in the slot, where he made his name early in his career, and he even has safety experience from his time at Louisiana Tech. If he can stay on the field, he raises the floor of this entire position group. That is a significant if, but it is not an unreasonable one.
The more reliable, although unproven, pieces of this group are on the outside, where second-year corner Nohl Williams and first-round rookie Mansoor Delane project as the opening-day starters. Deploying them this way, at least to start the season, makes sense because it offers the most upside.
Williams quietly had one of the more impressive rookie seasons of any corner in the league in 2025. He ranked 12th out of 114 cornerbacks in PFF’s coverage grade. The long and physical press-man corner did not get nearly enough attention for what he showed in limited opportunities, and a full-time role in 2026 should give him a chance to shine.
Delane’s pedigree speaks for itself. When you draft a player sixth overall, you expect him to play, and from day one. Defensive coordinator Steve Spagnuolo did not mince words about what he saw on tape heading into the draft.
“He jumped out on tape, there was no question about that, and it felt like, I think we all felt like he was the top corner in this class,” Spagnuolo said. “I kind of was real intrigued by his story. I think he could’ve came out after his last year there at Virginia Tech, or thought about it, but the information that we gathered was that he wanted to be challenged a little bit more, so you go to LSU. I think that speaks volumes about a guy and to have a really good year at LSU.”
Delane himself noted the schematic familiarity that should help him hit the ground running.
“Coach Baker’s defense at LSU, it was multiple defenses. I got to do everything,” Delane said. “I think that ultimately led me to be in the position I am right now, and just similar to kind of Spags’ defense, you know, we play everything. A lot of NFL defenses, they may do one type of thing, but we play every type of coverage.”
The third outside corner on the depth chart is Kristian Fulton, who is very much in the same bucket as Sneed in terms of what he needs to prove, which is health. Fulton lived up to his second-round pedigree out of LSU in 2024 with the Los Angeles Chargers, playing 15 games, a career-high, and parlaying it into a two-year, $20 million deal with the Chiefs last offseason.
Then 2025 happened. He played just eight games, accumulating 208 snaps, the fewest of his career outside of his rookie season. Once the season was lost down the stretch, Spagnuolo turned him into a full-time player, and he showed enough to convince the Chiefs not to save $5 million on the cap with a release. He is the most likely candidate for the third outside corner role, unless Sneed overtakes him.
The nickel competition is where things get particularly interesting. Kader Kohou and fourth-round rookie Jadon Canady are the two names to watch, and both profile as slot corners coming from situations where they thrived.
Kohou did not play in 2025 after tearing his ACL in the Dolphins’ training camp, but before the injury, he was gaining real traction as one of the better nickel corners in the NFL. His coverage instincts and versatility made him one of the more impactful, if underreported, additions of the Chiefs’ offseason. A healthy Kohou is a legitimate starter at the position. The question is how advanced he is in his recovery.
Canady brings a different kind of intrigue. The five-year college player spent time at Tulane, Ole Miss, and Oregon, accumulating 154 tackles, seven sacks, and four interceptions during his collegiate tenure.
At Oregon, he surrendered just a 39.4 passer rating according to PFF, and his 12.2 percent missed tackle rate speaks to his reliability in run support. The undersized defensive back also brings real scheme versatility, with 312 college snaps logged in the box and 234 as a free safety.
Special teams coordinator Dave Toub confirmed that Canady will be on the field immediately regardless of how the nickel competition shakes out.
“He’s going to be playing all four phases, for sure, right off the bat,” Toub said. “We’re looking at him at gunner. Obviously, corner on punt return, and he’ll be a two coming off the edge on kickoff and kick return; we can play him at a lot of spots except kick returner.”
Any of those three, Kohou, Canady, or even Chris Roland-Wallace, should represent an upgrade over Chamarri Conner, who manned the slot for much of the past two seasons and struggled in the role. Conner is moving back to his more natural position at safety in 2026, where he will compete with Alohi Gilman, Jaden Hicks, and perhaps Roland-Wallace for snaps.
Roland-Wallace’s case to make the roster is reasonable given his snap usage over the past two seasons, which included 82 defensive snaps and 231 special teams snaps at a 70 percent clip. It is just a matter of if they view him as a corner, safety, or both.
On the outside looking in are Kaiir Elam and Kevin Knowles in the corner conversation. Elam is the most notable name of the group. Drafted just after McDuffie by the Buffalo Bills in the first round of the 2022 draft, he has bounced between Buffalo, Dallas, and Tennessee without ever fully delivering on the pedigree. If he wants to crack what is shaping up to be a strong group, he will need a standout training camp and preseason.
Second-year corner Nohl Williams summed up the mood around the additions as well as anyone, noting what Sneed’s presence specifically means to a room full of young players.
“For sure. I’ve watched him throughout my college career,” Williams said of Sneed. “He’s a good cornerback addition to our defense, addition to our DB room. I haven’t talked to him, but I’m looking forward to meeting him, learning from him. He knows what it looks like. He knows how to be a championship DB on a championship team.”
That last line is the most telling part of this entire group. McDuffie and Watson are gone, and the losses are real. But between Delane’s upside, Williams’ emerging foundation, Sneed’s and Fulton’s experience, and genuine competition at the nickel, the Chiefs have assembled a cornerback room that deserves more than a cursory glance heading into training camp.
Writing only of Sneed's knee misses the mark. The concerns for Sneed are quad, age and knee, in that order. The Meniscus surgery should make the knee manageable for this season and probably more. He's hitting the age of losing some recovery speed that elevated him as an outside corner. The quad injury, particularly susceptible to all-out sprinting and the violence of full speed cuts boundary corners make, is by far my biggest concern. If it's fully healed with no deep muscle scarring, then okay. But recurrence suggests otherwise.
I like Sneed a lot. Here's hoping he can play outside corner. If not, perhaps he can extend his career in the slot and at safety, both positions he has played and his elite processing would support.