The Chiefs tried to trade for Anthony Hitchens last July

Anthony Hitchens is now part of the Kansas City Chiefs. It still feels weird.

Chiefs General Manager Brett Veach spoke about the acquisitions his team made on Wednesday, and he dropped an interesting nugget concerning Hitchens specifically.

“It is interesting,” Veach said. “And we will talk about this tomorrow, but when I took over in July (after John Dorsey was fired), I got with (Chiefs director of player personnel) Mike Borgonzi and the first call I made was to Dallas about Anthony Hitchens.”

If your’e wondering, Brett Veach was officially promoted by the Chiefs to the position of general manager on July 10th, 2017. This means the call came sometime in July after that.

Let’s remember the state of the Dallas Cowboys linebackers on such a date. Sean Lee was coming off of a First-Team All-Pro season. Jaylon Smith had still never played in the NFL and people were wondering what he could or couldn’t do. Oh and Damien Wilson had just been arrested.

Veach did a very smart thing in terms of identifying who he wanted to trade for, something that applied to Anthony Hitchens last July.

“We went through all the teams that had linebackers with one year left on their deal. Those are teams that if they haven’t reached a deal with their player, they are on their last year so maybe they will move them. You have to resign them and it is always dangerous in free agency.”

It makes sense that the Chiefs had interest in Anthony Hitchens a year ago. It also makes sense that the Cowboys weren’t willing to part with him. When Hitch walked off the field after being injured during the preseason though, I bet Will McClay was wishing he’d have dealt him (thankfully Anthony didn’t miss the whole season).

The Cowboys will still ultimately get what will hopefully be a fourth-round compensatory pick for Hitchens, so it’s not like they were wrong even in hindsight. They were just in a bind, did what they had to do, and things happened. Such is life.