Emari Demarcado Is Embracing His ‘niche In The League’ With The Chiefs

If you come into the league as an undrafted free agent who is hoping to stick, you have to learn how to do the little things right and make yourself valuable. And aside from one glaring mistake he made against the Tennessee Titans in Week 5 of last season, one of the Kansas City Chiefs‘ newest additions to the running back room has done just that.

If you haven’t seen Demarcado’s infamous highlight, this is the mistake I’m referring to.

But even when it happened, Demarcado didn’t make any excuses for himself.

“I can’t expect myself to be perfect,” Demercado said. “No one is. I had to let (the incident) go. That’s not who I am. Everybody messes up. Unfortunately, mine was that.

“I’ve seen the replay. Bonehead play. You look at it, you shake your head. … I definitely thought I was in. But emotions, I let them get the best of me.”

Instead, in the following weeks, he started trying to make a new name for himself.

Fans wanted Demercado to be released, lashing out in anger over social media. But the one-time undrafted rookie was on the roster for a reason. The Cardinals needed him. And that was emphasized again Monday in the win over the Cowboys, when Demercado rushed for a team-best 79 yards on only 14 carries and provided QB Jacoby Brissett with a number of key blocks that helped make the passing game go.

“I put who I am back on tape,” the understated Demercado said. “You make one mistake and the whole world kind of flames you for it. (Monday was) to set the record straight.”

It was Demarcado’s pass blocking that caught the eye of the media covering the Arizona Cardinals, and it’s what’s caught the eye of Kansas City’s coaching staff as well.

“I like the pass protection,” Chiefs head coach Andy Reid described Demarcado after practice on Wednesday. “He’s not going to bounce anything; he sees it, he lowers it, and he hits it in the run game; I think that’s important. Pass routes are pretty good. He’s played; he has experience; it’s just pushing yourself through this workload, and I like what I’ve seen the last couple of days.”

Pass protection isn’t something that came naturally to Demarcado, or as he once put it to a reporter while he was in Arizona:

“I sucked at it in college.”

But he worked at it, and now, as he battles to carve out a role for himself as the third-down back on Kansas City’s offense, it’s once again begun to pay dividends for Demarcado.

“I take a lot of pride [in pass protection],” Demarcado told the media after practice on Wednesday. “I think that’s just where I found my niche in the league.”

Especially when you consider who he is tasked with protecting this time around. And that’s not a knock on Cardinals quarterback Jacoby Brissett, but not all signal callers are created the same. Some players are more valuable to their team than others, and you’ll be hard-pressed to find a player more important to the fortunes of their franchise than quarterback Patrick Mahomes.

It’s not something Demarcado takes lightly.

“To stay on top of that and protect somebody like Pat, that’s a big deal,” Demarcado emphasized. “So I take a lot of pride in that.”

Some lessons can only be taught through taking reps and learning from your experiences. And it’s this experience that Demarcado has gained through his successes and failures that so far is giving him a hand up in the battle to be the third-down back, against younger and less experienced players like rookie Emmett Johnson, who, as Andy Reid noted on Wednesday, is “learning as he goes…”

“He’s pushing himself,” continued Reid, speaking about Johnson. “You saw a couple of these where he has to drop that pad level down. You go in high at this level, you’re going to get rearranged, and you don’t want that to happen.”

At the end of the day, I don’t care if it’s Demarcado, Johnson, or Gandalf standing in the backfield shouting, “You shall not pass!” to oncoming defensive tackles and Balrogs.

As long as Patrick Mahomes stays upright, that’s all I care about.

And right now, it seems Demarcado has the inside track to be that guy.