KANSAS CITY, Mo. -- The Kansas City Chiefs needed an upgrade at wide receiver and they at least began the improvement process by signing Philadelphia's Jeremy Maclin as a free agent.
But general manager John Dorsey said the Chiefs weren't desperate for a receiver. He indicated they were desperate for a receiver of Maclin's particular skills, but not a receiver in general.
Dorsey said the Chiefs didn't pursue any of the other top tier free-agent wide receivers and wouldn't have even had they missed on Maclin
He didn't mention names, but that list includes Green Bay's Randall Cobb, San Francisco's Michael Crabtree and Baltimore's Torrey Smith. Cobb resigned with the Packers and Smith moved to the San Francisco 49ers. Crabtree has yet to sign.
"The other ones who were close to him had different types of physical traits that didn't truly fit this system," Dorsey said. "What I wanted to do is give Andy as good of pieces to fit his system as I possibly could. So then you have somebody like Jeremy who's young and a fabulous route runner.
"It's a perfect fit. The position coach, the offensive coordinator, the head coach speak of his person. That's one of the pieces of the puzzle. And then he has the physical skills to match the stuff the coaches talked about. He's an exceptional route runner ... he can play multiple positions.
"Any time you can get a player like this, it's very rare."
That's why Maclin makes plenty of sense for the Chiefs, even discounting his big 2014 season for the Eagles when he caught 85 passes for 1,318 yards and 10 touchdowns.
Those 10 touchdowns were 10 more TD catches than the Chiefs' wide receivers combined for last year. Maclin indicated he was aware the Chiefs were held scoreless from their wide outs.
"You hear about it on ESPN," he said. "There was a lot of fluke stuff that happened, receivers fumbling on the 1-yard line or getting tripped up and stuff like that. There's a lot of stuff that goes into it. Hopefully I can score at least one next year."