ST. JOSEPH, Mo. — As he stressed out waiting to get selected in the 2024 NFL draft, BYU’s Kingsley Suamataia had something of a premonition and suddenly felt like he “could start breathing again.”

“I told my mom … I think I’m about to get a call,” he said later that night. “And then two seconds later I get a call.”

As he’d anticipated, or at least hoped, he was chosen by the Chiefs — who made him the 63rd overall pick in the second round. It was all he could want. Between his comfort with fellow BYU product Andy Reid, offensive line coach Andy Heck and others during his pre-draft visit to Kansas City, Suamataia already had felt like it was home.

So he couldn’t wait, he said, to play tackle in front of “Patty” Mahomes. And while he felt just as fluid on the right side as the left, he said, he was most eager to play the marquee line position of the so-called blind side.

“That would mean the world to me,” he said then.

Maybe you could say there’s a “careful what you wish for” lesson in what happened next.

Because that world was turned upside down before it could be set right.

With what seemed to be only token competition for the role, you may recall, Suamataia indeed won the left tackle job ... only to abruptly surrender it after a Week 2 fiasco against the Bengals and star pass rusher Trey Hendrickson.

His day included committing two holding penalties and yielding two sacks — as many as he’d given up in his last two collegiate seasons in 742 pass-blocking snaps — and got him yanked.

Not just for the game, alas, but much of the season — a development that cast doubt over what had become a much-anticipated future.

The flip side of all that is the humbling experience funneled into something far more substantial than a predicted future.

His actual one as the Chiefs’ left guard.

That’s where Suamataia found himself both literally and figuratively last season. And it’s where he is expected to continue on a redemptive arc in 2026 as a key part of a unit that should be a pillar of this team.

“Obviously, my rookie year didn’t go as planned, but I never doubted myself and my abilities,” Suamataia said Monday at the Chiefs’ Missouri Western training camp as they prepared for their preseason opener against the Rams on Saturday afternoon at Arrowhead Stadium. “So when I got thrown in there at guard, I was just ready to roll.”

Using a term for sparring in close quarters, he added, “I’m in the phone booth, being able to just grow from there.”

However much he managed to keep a grasp on his confidence his rookie year, no doubt he had to be contending with some deep angst as he played just 10 snaps in 13 of the final 14 regular-season games before a pivotal regular-season finale in Denver.

But Reid apparently was onto something when he spoke about Suamataia after the Bengals game, something that was conveyed to him through the long season.

“Sometimes,” he said, “you have to take a step back to take a step forward.”

And one way or another, though, Suamataia converted it all into fuel — and jump-started the rest of his career with a salvaging performance in the 2024 regular-season finale.

In an otherwise highly forgettable day in Chiefs history with starters resting for the playoffs, Suamataia played 31 snaps at left guard as the Broncos blasted them 38-0.

But Suamataia, who again had struggled mightily at left tackle in the one other start he made Week 10 against the Broncos, acquitted himself well in the otherwise debacle.

Largely up against Denver’s Zach Allen, he allowed just one pressure on 24 pass-blocking snaps.

“First time playing guard ever in my life, and I go against probably the best defensive tackle in the league,” Suamataia told The Kansas City Star’s Pete Sweeney in January. “It was definitely an eye-opener for me, but it was definitely a blessing, too.”

In fact, it reset everything about his career — and even the Chiefs’ broader direction.

Informed by that performance, the Chiefs were willing to part with Joe Thuney, a virtually perennial All-Pro who had been Associated Press first-team his last two seasons in Kansas City.

“I thought he felt more comfortable in there,” Reid said during 2025 offseason training. “... And that’s where we’ll put him.”

And it’s where he improbably became anchored ever since by a season in which the 6-foot-4, 326-pound Suamataia gave up just three sacks in 1,091 pass-blocking snaps.

Nestled between second-year left tackle Josh Simmons and center Creed Humphrey on a line also featuring guard counterpart Trey Smith and some combination of frontrunner Kahlil Benson, an undrafted rookie free agent, and Jaylon Moore at right tackle, he’s part of a group that figures to be well able to protect Mahomes while providing amply for running back Kenneth Walker III — the reigning Super Bowl MVP signed in the offseason.

That’s quite a shift from this time a year ago, when Suamataia said after an uneven first preseason game that he was “still trying to get the feel of that guard stuff” and working in tandem with then-rookie Simmons.

By the final 2025 preseason game, though, he was smiling and saying, “Going to have to show the world what we can do with that left side.”

And Simmons was proclaiming his faith in Suamataia and predicting a “big narrative change” ahead.

Part of that has come true because of the vital wavelength the two have established, with Suamataia suggesting Simmons “sees what I’m seeing, I’m seeing what he’s seeing.”

Meanwhile, the Chiefs are seeing in him what they’d hoped to all along — and Suamataia is experiencing what he anticipated from the get-go.

“I think I’m going to fit perfectly,” he said on draft night.

Never mind that it was down the line in more ways than one.

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