This Kansas City Chiefs team has a flaw. It’s not major, but it’s not nothing, either

On a night when the Chiefs settled on common ground with Creed Humphrey — set to make him the highest-paid center in NFL history — the best reminder of how desperately they need him came with him standing on the sideline.

Him.

His teammates who joined him in T-shirts and shorts on that sideline.

Or just about anyone who wasn’t part of the Chiefs getting crushed by the Bears 34-21 in their final act of the preseason.

The next time the Chiefs take the field, on Sept. 5 against Baltimore, they will drop a banner. The game will count in the standings. Maybe we’ll even draw some real conclusions from it.

You might call this nitpicking, in other words.

I’ll pick at it. What’s coming next isn’t just about one preseason game in which the Bears backups beat up on the Chiefs backups. Rather, that one game, that one preseason game, did nothing to dissuade me from writing about an issue that’s been apparent throughout training camp.

The Chiefs’ depth isn’t what it was a year ago and, man, they relied on it a year ago.

No doubt, to state the obvious, that you’d rather be set with your starters — you know, the guys who play the most — so everything here can be put in that context. But it’s quite rare an NFL team escapes a season without needing to step down the ladder of its depth chart. And as of now, two weeks shy of that game that counts, the Chiefs will find some slippery footing there.

Earlier this week, head coach Andy Reid challenged his second- and third-stringers to tackle better. To block better. To shed blocks more quickly. To just play better.

Let me just tell you about the first two drives of a preseason finale that featured exclusively second-, third- and fourth-stringers.

The Chiefs opened on defense. In seven plays, they committed three penalties, all of them in coverage. On another, cornerback Jaylen Watson, playing for the first time this preseason, bit so hard on a play-fake that the Bears burned him for a 44-yard catch. Hey, it happens, right?

Not to be outdone, though, the offense took over, and backup quarterback Chris Oladokun was running for his life within all of one shotgun snap. The Chiefs would eventually go for a fourth down in which Deneric Prince was practically tackled in sequence with receiving a handoff.

It started ugly.

It stayed ugly.

The best news for the Chiefs is the decimation involved none of their best players, who have a habit of looking very much less ugly, or turning the ugly into pretty final results anyway. It’s a defining quality. The worst news is their role players provided some big moments last fall, and it remains a mystery if this team has any of those players yet.

The Chiefs defense, the unit that ranked No. 2 in the NFL, was built on depth. The front office took advantage of a market deficiency — veteran role players cast aside by the rest of the league as trivial. They weren’t searching for a linebacker, but there sat Drue Tranquill without a job. Maybe they didn’t really need a safety, but they were enticed by the late availability of Mike Edwards.

They proved the importance of Tranquill. Of Edwards. Of Charles Omenihu. Tranquill and Edwards, who signed for a combined $5.9 million, played more than 300 defensive snaps during the playoff run.

Backups, at first.

Key pieces, at last.

The Chiefs lost players at every level of their defense this spring — Edwards in the secondary and Willie Gay at linebacker during free agency, along with edge rusher Charles Omenihu’s extended absence after knee surgery — and they replaced them with no one outside of the draft.

That’s not hyperbole. I’ve used that statistic a couple of times now since The Star’s Jesse Newell first brought it up: In part because of salary cap restraints, the Chiefs did not bring in an outside defensive free agent this offseason.

Recognizing there is time to develop some youth, and that the Chiefs proved even a week after Christmas Day isn’t too late for that development, there sure would appear some work remaining. The cornerback depth has been bad, to the point where you can’t help but wonder what might be out there on the waiver wire after teams trim their roster to 53 players. The defensive line could use a body. The second-unit offensive line could use anybody.

How did they get here? It’s a consequence of success, and I mean that in a multitude of ways. Their own players become more expensive. When they develop backups through the draft — say turning a seventh-round pick into Nick Allegretti — another team is ready to scoop him up for a multi-year contract and a starting job. When they turn a fourth-round pick into L’Jarius Sneed and a near-selection for an All-Pro cornerback, they’re quickly priced out of an extension.

They walk on some. Those who stay — like Humphrey — tighten the belt for those who follow.

It’s yet one more reminder of the importance of a draft for a team that so frequently picks at the tail end of it.

A tough spot, maybe.

One that others envy, sure.

After all, the Chiefs still have the quarterback, the head coach, the tight end and improved starting weapons that will surround them. This flaw isn’t a sound-the-alarm situation. Even if we don’t term it fatal, though, after the Chiefs reserves were overwhelmed in the trenches for three preseason games and the secondary looked lost in coverage at times, we can at least agree it’s a flaw, right?

It might not be everything, or certainly not the most important thing.

But it’s not nothing.