Felix Anudike-Uzomah ‘Doing Well’ Despite Limited Playing Time

The Kansas City Chiefs' 2022 rookie class was one of the more impactful groups in recent memory, with multiple players contributing to a Super Bowl-winning team. That, combined with some savvy free agent pickups, naturally didn't leave many spots left for the following group of first-year players to make an impact.

Some players have felt that worse than others, but a sneaky storyline of this season is first-round pick Felix Anudike-Uzomah virtually getting phased out on defense. Despite that, defensive coordinator Steve Spagnuolo doesn't sound one bit worried about his rookie. In fact, he said on Thursday that Anudike-Uzomah is learning on the fly and correcting his mistakes with efficiency. 

"I think Felix is doing well," Spagnuolo said. "I know we're not seeing the numbers. I talked with Felix the other day — he's got a bunch of guys in front of him that are playing pretty good. That's kind of just what happened in his rookie year but at some point here, and we don't want anybody to get hurt, but he's going to be called upon at some point to have to [play]. He didn't have very many plays last week. One sticks out that he did really good on, and one that he didn't do really good on, and he knows that. He's going to learn. I see him correct things. I've seen mistakes he's made, whether it's in practice or in games, and I see him get it corrected out on the field. We just hope he keeps doing that (motions hand to signal progression)."

Through the first five weeks of his rookie campaign, Anudike-Uzomah was getting plenty of playing time. The Kansas State product logged double-digit snaps in each of those games, with two of them being outings of at least 20 reps. After those 98 combined snaps and Charles Omenihu's return to the lineup, though, things have been much different. 

Anudike-Uzomah played 10 snaps in the Chiefs' Week 7 win over the Los Angeles Chargers, and he has yet to sniff that mark in any of the ensuing games. Over the last four weeks, his totals are nine, four, seven and three. He has two tackles dating back to October 22 and Pro Football Focus credits him with a pair of quarterback pressures during that span, although that's far from the level of production most teams want from their first draft pick of the year. With reps being hard to come by due to the number of bodies at the position, Spagnuolo reiterated that Kansas City is fully comfortable with putting Anudike-Uzomah back out on the field more often if needed.

"If it happened, yeah," Spagnuolo said. "We'd slot him right in there. We wouldn't hesitate to stick him in there if we had to, but I do think the guys there that are playing right now have been doing a pretty good job." 

Some view Anudike-Uzomah's lack of production as a reason to sound the alarms. Compared to the production George Karlaftis had as a rookie (33 tackles and six sacks while playing 64% of available defensive snaps), the new kid on the block has done next to nothing. That's the point, however: the new kid. Anudike-Uzomah, much like Karlaftis in 2022, is young (21). The difference is that this year, there are three established veterans — Karlaftis, Omenihu and Mike Danna — who simply aren't going to be taken off the field in favor of someone who's still wet behind the ears.

Part of the reason why the 2022 Kansas City rookie class was so good was because it had to be. If the first-year players didn't perform well in their roles, the team may have been doomed come playoff time. Things are far from the same now. Not every position on the field has room for an instant-impact rookie. Defensive end happens to be one of them. While it isn't ideal that Anudike-Uzomah is essentially redshirting for a huge chunk of his rookie season, the Chiefs remain confident in him. Until given a reason to believe otherwise, that will be their plan.