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The New York Giants are trading guard Joshua Ezeudu to the Kansas City Chiefs for a 2028 seventh-round pick, a league source speaking under condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly about the deal confirmed to The Athletic.
Selected out of North Carolina in the third round of the 2022 NFL Draft, Ezeudu, now 26, has started 10 games and played in 33. A calf injury sidelined Ezeudu for all of 2025.
The 2020 third-team All-ACC member has been a versatile piece along the offensive line in New York, occasionally filling in at left tackle when starter Andrew Thomas was injured. Most recently, Giants head coach John Harbaugh said — just a day before the trade — Ezeudu would be a factor in multiple places.
Needed depth for Kansas City
One of our six training camp takeaways for the Chiefs was that they lacked depth on the interior offensive line.
The Chiefs signaled this when right guard Trey Smith was recently held out of practices because of a hip injury. Though veteran Jaylon Moore and undrafted rookie Kahlil Benson were competing for the starting right tackle job, both were shuffled to right guard during drills those days — an indication coaches saw them as more capable backups inside than roster vets Mike Caliendo and Hunter Nourzad.
Ezeudu, then, makes a lot of sense for the Chiefs at a relatively low price of a 2028 seventh-rounder. He should give the team a capable backup on the interior, while also giving Kansas City more flexibility to either make Benson a swing tackle or develop him at guard.
The Chiefs saw in 2025 how quickly a season can unwind when injuries pile up on the offensive line. Ezeudu profiles as some nice insurance and raises the floor of the guard position, which had worried the Chiefs throughout this month’s training camp. — Jesse Newell, Kansas City Chiefs writer
What this means for the Giants
That the Giants would be trading offensive linemen ahead of the start of the season feels almost unfathomable given the state of the line through the last decade. And yet here we are with two trades within the last week after the Giants dealt Daniel Faalele to the Jacksonville Jaguars for a 2027 sixth-round pick.
We’ll get back to the state of the offensive line in a minute, but the deal makes sense when taking coach John Harbaugh’s words from Monday into account. When asked about the Faalele trade, the coach said, “Daniel was doing well for the role he was going to be playing, and yet we have other guys that were doing well, too. So, it was a luxury for us. Any time you can add picks, it’s a valuable thing. It’s a future thing.
“Doesn’t seem like much now, but it’ll matter Day 3 of the draft. It’ll be something that we’ll be happy we’ve got.”
The natural follow-up was if there would be more of those moves ahead of the season, to which Harbaugh said the Giants would like to take advantage of the opportunities if they arise as much as they can.
So where does this leave the offensive line? The starters are pretty set (left tackle Andrew Thomas, left guard Jon Runyan Jr., center John Michael Schmitz, right guard Francis Mauigoa and right tackle Jermaine Eluemunor). Marcus Mbow is the swing tackle with Aaron Stinnie as the backup guard. Rookie tackle J.C. Davis and either Lucas Patrick or Bryan Hudson seem in line at backup center should the Giants keep nine linemen. — Charlotte Carroll, New York Giants writer
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