KANSAS CITY, Mo. -- While the Kansas City Chiefs were going through training camp this summer, Kareem Hunt went through a workout routine on his own hundreds of miles away.
Hunt met his former track coach, Matt Luck, four times a week at Willoughby South High School outside of Cleveland. They would set up cones representing defenders at various spots on the football field and run plays, Luck as the quarterback and handing off or throwing to Hunt, the running back.
He would make reads on the cones, as he would with defenders in a real game, and then cuts based on their positions, with an NFL limit of 40 seconds in between plays.
Hunt's goal was not merely to get a job with an NFL team like the Chiefs, but to be ready to have an immediate impact once he did.
"He did things that he would do in a game so that when he did get into camp and he makes that movement, his body is used to it," Luck said.
Based on Hunt's first two games with the Chiefs, who signed him after losing starting running back Isiah Pacheco to a broken leg, those workouts were a success. Hunt was the Chiefs' leading rusher with 69 yards in their Week 4 win over the Los Angeles Chargers, then had his first 100-yard game since 2020 and scored a touchdown in Monday night's victory over the New Orleans Saints.
It was more than the Chiefs could've expected from Hunt, who hadn't played in a game or practiced with teammates in eight months before arriving in Kansas City. Hunt acknowledged it was more than he expected from himself.
"I guess it's always a part of you, [after] not playing for a while and then coming back and playing, [wondering] 'Just how are you going to play?'" Hunt said. "So I just went out there and I continued to just be myself. I know what I'm good at doing and some of my weaknesses."
Hunt started his NFL career in Kansas City, drafted by the Chiefs with the 86th pick in the third round of the 2017 draft. He led the NFL in rushing as a rookie in 2017 and was having another big season in 2018 but was released in November of that year after a video surfaced showing Hunt shoving and kicking a woman outside of his Cleveland residence. No charges were filed against Hunt, but he was placed on the commissioner exempt list and suspended by the NFL for the first eight games of the 2019 season.
In 2019, his hometown Cleveland Browns signed him and he played five seasons with them. He became a free agent after the 2023 season, so the Chiefs were more hopeful than certain about how Hunt would fit in when they signed him to the practice squad in September.
