Chiefs’ Brett Veach calls NFL top-30 visits ‘extremely helpful’ in player evaluation

On Friday, Kansas City’s GM described the long process prospects go through.

Official team visits for draft prospects are a portion of the NFL Draft that is often left shrouded in mystery.

In these so-called top-30 visits, teams are allowed to bring up to 30 draft-eligible players to team facilities for private meetings, which serve a variety of purposes. Sometimes, prospects are brought in so teams can fully evaluate their recovery from recent injuries. Other times, teams want to learn more about small-school players who weren’t invited to the NFL Scouting Combine.

Prospects often find themselves making multiple team visits. Chiefs’ tight end Travis Kelce famously recalled his visit with the Baltimore Ravens during the 2013 draft cycle.

During his pre-draft press conference on Friday, Kansas City Chiefs general manager Brett Veach gave a surprisingly vivid description of the team’s process — which has many steps.

Photo by David Eulitt/Getty Images

“It’s extremely helpful when the guys come in here for the visits,” explained Veach. “They are here all day. They will start in the training room. They will go through another comprehensive MRI and [meet] with [vice president of sports medicine and performance] Rick [Burkholder]. They get a chance to meet with all of our coaches.”

By the time teams can schedule their top-30 visits, scouts and general managers have already met with hundreds of prospects during the NFL Scouting Combine and and college all-star games. But those meetings have limitations.

“At the combine,” Veach noted, “there is a chance to spend some time with all these kids, but it’s maxed out at like 15-17 minutes. You get a chance to get a brief intro [and] a little bit of an idea of their background.”

As far as the Chiefs are concerned, that is often insufficient.

“You get into some football, but it’s not very long,” said Veach. “So I think just having the whole day — getting to know the person, understand the person more, talk through things, talk through football, talk through their upbringing [and] all that kind of stuff — is extremely important to us.”

What is unknown about a particular player is what drives the screening process.

“We either feel one way or the other [about a player],” said Veach. “Guys we are not interested in is one category. Guys that we feel really good about — ‘we know this guy’ — it’s not going to do us any good; we don’t typically deal with those guys. Then you have a handful of guys that when you [met with them] at the combine, you feel like those 15 minutes just wasn’t enough. You want some more information.

“Then there is another series of guys that didn’t get invited to the combine. So you like them to some degree, but you have no medical on them whatsoever. Those guys have to come in because there’s just no medical on them.”

Photo by Kevin Sabitus/Getty Images

These visits can sometimes make a significant difference in the team’s evaluation of a player. Last year, Veach revealed that after the combine, cornerback Jaylen Watson wasn’t on Kansas City’s draft board. But Watson’s visit to Kansas City changed minds. Taken with the 243rd selection in 2022, he’s now made significant contributions to two Super Bowl-winning squads.

We don’t always learn about every player who visits the Chiefs before the draft. But when we do, we profile them; there’s no doubt that the team has had at least some interest in them. Last year, Kansas City’s second and fifth-round selections — SMU wide receiver Rashee Rice and Stephen F. Austin edge rusher B.J. Thompson — visited the team before the draft.

This weekend, we’ll probably be adding other players to that list.