By BRENT MARTIN
St. Joseph Post
Whether the Kansas City Chiefs continue to hold training camp in St. Joseph has yet to be decided.
In 2020, the Chiefs reached a three-year agreement with Missouri Western State University to hold the camp on the St. Joseph campus through the 2022 season. The agreement can be extended for two years.
Chiefs President Mark Donovan says the agreement has been beneficial to the club.
“Missouri Western and St. Joe have been great to us,” Donovan tells reporters. “They’ve made sure that they understand that every rep matters. That’s an easy way of saying, ‘Everything has to be right; we can’t afford to miss.’ That’s really important. We love our partnership; we love our relationships, and we fully intend to continue to have those relationships.”
Donovan notes the Chiefs do have options in the contract. Whether to exercise those options will be discussed with Missouri Western officials after this year’s training camp concludes.
For now, it appears the Chiefs like the arrangement in St. Joseph.
“Our head coach (Andy Reid) loves getting away, our players like it,” Donovan says. “COVID actually gave us an opportunity to look at a different way of doing this. I don’t want to oversell that they like it because it is training camp, I think there’s an aspect they don’t like anywhere, but I think that camaraderie building and that time away is really valuable and we see it that way.”
A trend has been underway the past few years for NFL clubs to move training camp back home, holding camps onsite rather than away from their stadiums and facilities. The Chiefs remain one of the few clubs that continue to get away for camp.
This is the first year of the three years since the signing the new deal that has been free of coronavirus pandemic restrictions.
“I think training camp – we’ll come out of this year, this will be our first real normal one – and we’ll do the same thing and see if there are things we can do differently,” says Donovan. “But I think for this period of time, what Andy (Reid) has told me, this is really valuable and we like doing it this way.”
Missouri Western has hosted Chiefs Training Camp since 2010 when the Chiefs decided to bring training camp closer to home after 20 years away from the state of Missouri. The Chiefs have had five training camp locations in the club's history.