Andy Reid's QB Factory: Why Garrett Nussmeier At Pick 249 Is The Stash To Watch

With the No. 249 overall pick — deep in the seventh round of the 2026 NFL Draft, acquired via a trade with the host Pittsburgh Steelers — the Kansas City Chiefs selected LSU quarterback Garrett Nussmeier. On paper, a seventh-round quarterback is a footnote. In Kansas City, behind Andy Reid, it is the most interesting late-round selection of the weekend, because the Chiefs did not stumble into Nussmeier. They confirmed afterward that drafting a quarterback late and developing him was a plan general manager Brett Veach and Reid had discussed for a while, and that Nussmeier was the player who gave them the chance to execute it.

The fall is the part that makes this a stash and not a flyer. Heading into the draft, Nussmeier was near-unanimously ranked as the No. 3 quarterback prospect in the class, behind only Fernando Mendoza and Ty Simpson. He ended up the tenth quarterback selected, and he did not come off the board until pick 249. A consensus top-three positional prospect sliding to the back of the seventh round is the kind of value gap that only exists when something — medical flags, scheme questions, a thin overall quarterback market — pushes a player down the board past where the tape says he belongs. Kansas City was content to let him slide all the way to them.

The reason the Chiefs can treat this as a luxury is the name in front of him: Patrick Mahomes. Nussmeier is not being drafted to compete for a starting job in 2026. He is being drafted to sit, watch, and learn behind a quarterback in his prime, with a realistic outlook of serving as Mahomes' backup as early as 2027. "I'm so excited to be in a room with those guys, coach Reid and his unbelievable offensive mind and sitting behind Patrick and steal some things from him and see the game through his eyes," Nussmeier said after the pick. That is the entire developmental thesis stated by the player himself.

Reid's track record with quarterbacks is why this lineage matters. Across his Philadelphia and Kansas City tenures, Reid built a reputation as one of the great quarterback developers in NFL history — elevating Donovan McNabb, getting career-best work out of Michael Vick, turning Nick Foles into a player good enough to win a Super Bowl MVP elsewhere, and rehabilitating Alex Smith into a consistent winner. The pattern in Philadelphia was nearly a business model: draft or acquire a quarterback, develop him, and watch his value rise. The quarterbacks rarely played as well after they left.

The most relevant precedent is Mahomes himself. When Kansas City traded up to take Mahomes in 2017, Reid did not throw him into the fire. He sat Mahomes for an entire rookie season behind Alex Smith, who led the Chiefs to the playoffs while the rookie watched. Reid later called the value of that year unbuyable, crediting Smith — "the ultimate professional" — with teaching Mahomes how to carry himself in the league. The Nussmeier selection is that same blueprint inverted: this time Mahomes is the veteran in the room, and a late-round developmental quarterback gets the redshirt-style apprenticeship that Reid believes in.

The bloodline detail adds another layer. Nussmeier is the son of longtime college and NFL offensive coordinator Doug Nussmeier, meaning he arrives with a football-coaching upbringing on top of his LSU production. For a Reid offense built on timing, pre-snap manipulation, and a quarterback's command of a dense playbook, a coach's son who was a consensus top-three prospect is precisely the kind of high-floor developmental clay Kansas City prefers to mold. The Chiefs are not asking him to be ready. They are asking him to absorb.

What makes this the stash to watch, rather than just another seventh-round name, is the asymmetry of the bet. If Nussmeier never develops, the Chiefs spent a late seventh-round pick — a cost so low it barely registers. If he does develop, Kansas City has a quarterback who was a top-three prospect entering the draft, schooled for one to two seasons behind the best player of his generation, inside the system of the best quarterback developer of the era. That is the most favorable risk-reward profile a stash quarterback can have, and it is why a pick deep in the seventh round is worth this much ink. The factory has a new project, and the assembly line has produced a Super Bowl roster's worth of quarterbacks before.