Pre-Camp Breakdown: LB Willie Gay Jr. Has an Opportunity to Earn a Larger Role in 2021 – chiefs.com

Gay Jr. suffered a pair of injuries (an ankle sprain in Week 17 and a knee injury in practice prior to Super Bowl LV) that kept him off the field for virtually the remainder of the campaign following his breakout performance against Atlanta, but that game should serve as an exciting reminder of what the 23-year-old can do on the football field. The Chiefs will need to fill the void left by Damien Wilson, who accounted for 529 defensive snaps at linebacker last season, and Gay Jr. has an opportunity in camp to show that he can do it.

Nick Bolton

Kansas City selected Bolton, who played his college ball at Mizzou, with the No. 58 overall pick in this year’s draft. The six-foot-tall, 232-pound Bolton was a star for the Tigers, starting 22 games over the last two seasons while notching 16.5 tackles-for-loss and three sacks in that time, establishing himself as an energetic playmaker who always seemed to be around the ball.

Bolton led Missouri in tackles in each of the last two seasons – racking up 202 total tackles since 2019 while averaging more than nine tackles-per-game – but his production went beyond just the record books in Columbia. In fact, Bolton recorded the most defensive stops of any linebacker in SEC play in each of the last two seasons.

Those performances earned him First-Team All-SEC honors in each of the last two years and garnered Second-Team All-America recognition in 2020. Additionally, here’s how Pro Football Focus described Bolton in their pre-draft analysis:

“Brick wall. Opposition will be the one moving backward on contact.”

Bolton joins a linebacker corps that includes a pair of established veterans in Hitchens and Niemann, plus an emerging player in Gay Jr., but he’ll have his chance to earn playing time – whether that be on defense or special teams – during camp.