KANSAS CITY, Mo. \u2014 The Kansas City Chiefs exercised their fifth-year options Tuesday on cornerback Trent McDuffie and pass rusher George Karlaftis, two of the young pillars of a defense that has helped them to reach three consecutive Super Bowls.<\/p>\n
The deadline to pick up the option year is Thursday.<\/p>\n
The 24-year-old McDuffie, who was the 21st overall pick in 2022, has started all 43 games that he has played over the past three seasons. McDuffie was a first-team All-Pro in 2023 and a second-team All-Pro this past season, when he picked off the first two passes of his career and had a career-best 13 pass deflections while also forcing a fumble.<\/p>\n
Karlaftis, who is also 24, was the 30th overall pick in the same draft, and has developed into one of the NFL’s top-tier defensive ends. He had six sacks as a rookie, 10 1\/2 sacks the following year and eight last season.<\/p>\n
The Chiefs’ draft three years ago is certain to go down as one of the best in club history. <\/p>\n
Second-round pick Bryan Cook started every game at safety last season. Third-round pick Leo Chenal has started 32 games at linebacker over his first three seasons. Fourth-round pick Josh Williams has appeared in 50 games, and seventh-round selections Jaylen Watson, Isiah Pacheco and Nazeeh Johnson have started games or been role players.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"KANSAS CITY, Mo. \u2014 The Kansas City Chiefs exercised their fifth-year options Tuesday on cornerback Trent McDuffie and…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":10335,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[2063],"tags":[346,7,118,110,2438,2437,6,15,2309],"class_list":{"0":"post-10334","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-kansas-city-chiefs","8":"tag-chiefs","9":"tag-football","10":"tag-kansas-city","11":"tag-kansas-city-chiefs","12":"tag-kansascity","13":"tag-kansascitychiefs","14":"tag-nfl","15":"tag-nfl-draft","16":"tag-wires-bot"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nfl\/114422537665756433","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10334","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10334"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10334\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/10335"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10334"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10334"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10334"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}