As Kansas City Chiefs’ defensive end George Karlaftis prepares for the start of his fifth season, he is seeing fewer familiar faces on the field. Only longtime Chiefs defensive tackle Chris Jones boasts a longer tenure in Kansas City than Karlaftis.
Longtime veterans such as defensive end Mike Danna and defensive tackle Derrick Nnadi moved on to new teams in the offseason. The Chiefs eyed younger talent by selecting Clemson defensive tackle Peter Woods in the first round of April’s draft before adding
Oklahoma pass rusher R Mason Thomas in the second.
Speaking Monday after the team’s training camp practice at Missouri Western State University in St. Joe, Karlaftis discussed his new role as a mentor to younger players.
“There’s a whole lot of [new] guys,” Karlaftis remarked. “It’s funny after these practices, they will all go straight to the iPad. That’s what I used to do, so it’s funny looking back at that. But [they] go to the iPad and watch the tape. They will come up to me—come up to Chris like, ‘Okay, what do you think about this rep and what do you think I could do better?’ Those guys, they’re hungry. Hungry for knowledge, hungry to get better.”
One Chiefs coaching move that largely went unnoticed was the return of Terry Bradden as the team’s assistant defensive line coach. Bradden previously spent eight seasons with Kansas City and was a part of three Super Bowl-winning coaching staffs. He spent one year coaching the defensive line at Nebraska before returning to the Chiefs.
Karlaftis reports that Bradden has been a big part of working with the new talent.
“We’ve developed a routine after practice with Coach Bradden of doing ‘these hands,’” he explained. “[We’re] doing them every single day, so we can stack and really do stuff that we can apply to our game. So, [we’re] doing that on the field, coupled up with all the conversations we’ll have in the meeting rooms, outside of the meeting rooms and stuff like that. All those guys are just so hungry, and they want to get better. They want to be great, and they love ball, so I love having those guys around. They’re all great additions.”
In Karlaftis’ second season in 2023, he was part of a fearsome Super Bowl-winning defensive unit that produced 57 sacks. Having been to the top of the NFL hierarchy, he knows that diminished results such as the team’s 33 sacks a year ago are not good enough.
He believes the new additions will help make Kansas City’s front seven feared again for stout run defense and for getting home on opposing quarterbacks.
“This year is all about mindset and mentality for us,” Karlaftis explained. “We feel like it starts with our group. It starts upfront. We can take this defense wherever we want as a front. Stopping the run and helping the guys in the back. Really, it’s just starting with us and putting the focus on handling what we need to [do] to make it easier on the linebackers and the [defensive backs] so we can have the best season possible. We want to get back to the promised land. We want to get back to getting all those sacks. We want to stop the run as well as we can. We are as motivated as ever.”
