What Chiefs’ Andy Reid Is Looking for at Left Tackle

The Kansas City Chiefs opened their 2025 training camp with an Andy Reid press conference on Sunday. The head coach held the conference in front of the team dorm at St. Joseph, home of the Missouri Western State Griffons.

The team plans on holding athletic testing and their first team meeting on Monday, followed by the first workout a day later. Only on Tuesday can the Chiefs begin to truly evaluate who belongs as the starting left tackle.

At first, it was understood that the Chiefs' left tackle spot would rotate between rookie first-rounder Josh Simmons and free agent pickup Jaylon Moore, who previously was a San Francisco 49er. However, Reid revealed that right tackle Jawaan Taylor will start as one of three players on the Physically-Unable-to-Perform (PUP) list.

“Jawaan is out for the beginning of it, so we’ll just flip those two guys, and they’ll work in there,” said Reid. “We’ll go from there. So yeah, but Andy [Heck] rotates all those guys anyway.”

Reid then hinted that Taylor's time on the PUP list would be brief, as Kansas City would ease back into their normal left tackle rotation as Taylor takes his starting position as right tackle.

“You’re going to look for the best guy, to start with, that can fill in that spot and that we can have a little consistency there,” he said. “We didn’t have that last year, and so let’s work at it and see what we come up with. We’ve got some good candidates for it, and we’ll just see where it goes.”

The biggest worry was Simmons' status for the start of camp. He suffered a torn patellar tendon last season when at Ohio State, which sidelined him for the rest of the season, including their undefeated Playoff run. Reid confirmed at the conference that Simmons would be a full participant starting Tuesday.

“He stayed up here this whole break,” said Reid when praising Josh Simmons. “He’s been here, working his tail off... in the way he finished Phase 3. But it looks like he’s ready to go, and we’ll keep an eye on him and see where he’s at. But his condition — he was good when he was out there — and he seems to be a worker, so we’ll just have to see. He’s never been through one of these, so we gotta see how it goes.”

As time before the start of the season only shrinks, Reid hopes that he can name a starter by mid-August, as the Chiefs start prepping for another hopefully dominant year.

“I think by the time you get out of this thing, you’d like to have an idea who that is, right? You want to have a feel on it. So we evaluate these guys — every player — for whether it’s a light practice or a hard practice, they’re evaluated and graded and so on. So, we’ll see how it all sorts out.”

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