Joe Thuney’s Week 6 check-in is good, but not as clean as last season. PFF credited the former Chiefs All-Pro with 12 pressures allowed and two sacks allowed this year, a step back from the 15 pressures and zero sacks he gave up in his first season with the Bears.
That matters now because the Chiefs were back in Week 6 hosting the Chargers after their bye, a reminder of how the trade still echoes on both sides. Kansas City moved Thuney last offseason, and the deal helped the Chiefs beyond simply clearing money off the books: it let them reshape the offensive line picture and move forward without carrying one of the league’s biggest guard salaries.
Anthony Miller’s read on Thuney fits the numbers. He called him good, just not as good as he was last year, and said the guard has allowed a lot of pressures. Miller added that Garrett Bradbury struggling at center has had a lot to do with the extra heat, which points to how pass protection is built as a chain and not as a set of isolated one-on-one snaps. When the middle breaks down, the guard next to it often feels it first.
That is the part that keeps Thuney’s season from being judged too neatly. He is still described as solid, and the gap between 12 pressures and 15 pressures is not enough by itself to turn a good lineman into a bad one. But the sacks are new, and sacks change the conversation because they end plays, not just disrupt them. For a player who thrived in his inaugural season in the Windy City, the question is no longer whether he can still hold up, but how much of the decline is his and how much is the center play around him.
The Chiefs have already made their choice, and Thuney is living with the numbers that came after it. Week 6 has put a sharper edge on the comparison with last year, and the next clear marker will be whether his pressure total stays stuck above the old level or starts bending back toward it.
