Kansas City Chiefs WR Marquez Valdes-Scantling is back to recruiting his former Green Bay Packers teammates ahead of the start of free agency.
He got a fast start to the recruiting circuit, making a pitch to Packers’ pending free agent WR Allen Lazard just last month. Now, Valdes-Scantling has his sights set on another Packers pass-catcher who is expected to hit free agency next week. It would seem that he’d like to team up with Robert Tonyan Jr. again — a tight end whom Valdes-Scantling played with for four seasons in Green Bay.
“Yo (Robert Tonyan),” Valdes-Scantling wrote on Twitter. “Wanna come hand out with your old buddy in KC for a few months out of the year and play some football?”
Yo @RobTonJr wanna come hang out with your old buddy in KC for a few months out of the year and play some football?
— Marquez V-S (@MVS__11) March 8, 2023
Tonyan, 28, entered the league as an undrafted free agent out of Indiana State in 2017. The 6-foot-5 and 240-pound tight end caught on with the Packers in 2018, but he didn’t have his big breakout until the 2020 season when he caught 52 receptions for 528 yards and 11 touchdowns. He’s yet to replicate that season, with an ACL tear ending his season prematurely in 2021. He came back to appear in 16 games with 3 starts for the Packers last year, posting 44 catches for 362 yards and two scores.
The Chiefs saw a big uptick in 12 personnel in 2022, using two tight ends at the fifth-highest rate in the NFL. Having a stable of players at the position is never a bad thing and with Blake Bell and Jody Fortson (ERFA) set to become free agents, adding another player to the mix might not be the worst idea. Kansas City does already have four tight ends under contract for 2023 and it’s a deep draft class, which might dissuade the team from making a move. It also might mean that a player like Tonyan could come cheaply in free agency.
