Kansas City did not just find one player worth keeping after rookie minicamp. It found three.
Xavier Loyd was the wide receiver. Marlen Sewell and Kahlil Benson were the other two, a defensive back from Vanderbilt and an offensive tackle who took the long way around before landing in Kansas City.
The Chiefs signed all three to their 90-man offseason roster after a weekend that brought in more than 70 tryout players. Most of them went home. These three did not.
Marlen Sewell put five years into Vanderbilt and got his answer on a Monday
Sewell is a 6-foot-1, 199-pound defensive back who spent his entire college career at Vanderbilt across 45 games.
He never transferred. He never chased a bigger stage. He stayed, competed, and finished his eligibility at a program that rarely sends players to the league.
In his final season he recorded 52 tackles, two passes defensed and 1.5 tackles for loss.
That kind of production does not get anyone drafted. It does, apparently, get someone into a Chiefs minicamp, and then it gets that someone a contract if he performs well enough in front of the right people over three days.
Kansas City is not handing Sewell a role. The secondary competition there is real and the roster cuts will be ruthless by August.
But the Chiefs opened an actual offseason spot for him, which is a different thing entirely from a tryout that goes nowhere.
He survived the hardest part. Now comes the part that matters more.
Kahlil Benson went from Indiana to Colorado and back again and ended up a national champion
Benson started at Indiana, transferred to Colorado in 2024, blocked for Shedeur Sanders for a season, and then transferred back to Indiana for his final year.
That last move looked like a gamble at the time. It ended with a national championship.
He started 12 games at right tackle in 2025, protecting Fernando Mendoza, who became the No. 1 overall pick in the 2026 NFL Draft. He allowed four sacks and 24 total pressures across that season.
Over 49 career college games and 33 starts, he built the kind of resume that fills out a combine profile without ever quite clearing the bar to hear his name called in April.
At 6-foot-6 and 319 pounds he has the frame every NFL team wants at tackle. Kansas City has an open competition at right tackle heading into the summer. Those two facts being true at the same time is why Benson was at minicamp, and why he left it with a contract.
Two transfers, a title, and now an NFL offseason roster spot. He gave the Chiefs enough on that practice field to make them want more.
What actually happened when Kansas City sorted through 70 tryout players
More than 70 players came into that minicamp looking for exactly what Sewell and Benson walked out with. Three of them got it.
That number is the context that everything else sits inside. A rookie minicamp tryout is not a formality and it is not a courtesy.
It is a compressed evaluation where most players do everything right and still go home without a phone call.
Sewell and Benson made theirs count. Neither of them has a roster spot locked up and neither of them is done proving anything.
But Kansas City decided after watching them for a weekend that they were worth keeping in the building, and in the NFL that is where everything starts.
The 53-man roster is a long way from here. Getting on the 90-man roster is the first step, and both of them just took it.
