KANSAS CITY, Mo. — Ten minutes after the final Chiefs practice of the summer — a day reserved for the infamous run test — linebacker Nick Bolton is standing in front of the media, analyzing the defensive rookie class.

Smart, agile, able to pick things up quickly — a sample of the impressions that stuck with Bolton.

But the biggest revelation he made Thursday didn’t come during the examination of new players. To the contrary, it was about a four-year veteran and the man who’s now the second most expensive defensive player on the roster.

Himself.

See, the reason Bolton so effortlessly offered descriptions of each and every rookie is because he watched the tape. And here’s the revealing part: That tape came from rookie minicamp.

Bolton, quite obviously, didn’t participate in a rookie camp. But he also wasn’t even in the building during it. Heck, he wasn’t even in the same city.

Yet as some veteran teammates enjoyed their last couple of weeks before summer programming, Bolton opened his team-supplied iPad and watched play after play.

It gets even better. He watched the rookies participate in individual drills — without an offense on the field.

“You see guys doing practice drops and getting eyes in the right place and eye progression and stuff like that,” he said.

Big-picture that: Bolton is spending his May weekends on the iPad watching the eye progression of rookie players — dissecting how they might read a play.

“Those little things that you can see on the iPads help you,” Bolton said, before offering an example of its application in mandatory minicamp this week. “Like, ‘I watched the play, and you had your eyes in the wrong spot. Move your eyes this way first and then go back that way. It helps you with the progression and getting in the right spot.’”

Imagine being on the other side of that conversation, because second-round pick Omarr Norman-Lott, third-round edge rusher Ashton Gillotte, fourth-round cornerback Nohl Williams and fifth-round linebacker Jeffrey Bassa have been on the other side of it.

After a half-week rookie camp, the veterans show up, and one of them is analyzing your eye movements.

It’s crazy, right? It’s also rare.

And one more thing: It’s exactly why the Chiefs prioritized bringing Bolton back.

If you’ve arrived at this space before, you already know I’m not the biggest champion of paying non-premium positions near the top of the market. The Chiefs made Bolton the fifth-highest-paid off-ball linebacker in football this offseason with a 3-year, $45 million contract, with $30 million of it guaranteed.

It’s difficult to reach a point in which I don’t wonder whether they overpaid for a position that is less impactful than several others on the field. But the more you learn about Bolton, it’s easier to understand why if there’s a non-premium position player to stretch that budget, they trusted it should have been him.

He impacts the premium spots.

Those early- and mid-round defensive draft picks — Norman-Lott, Gillotte and Williams — play the positions that have a wider opportunity to influence the outcome of a game. And a month shy of the Chiefs reporting to training camp, it’s evident Bolton has already influenced all of them.

Whether the value of that equates to $15 million per year is a valid question.

But we can all agree it’s worth something.

Kansas City produced back-to-back top-10 defenses in yards allowed for the second time since the 1970-71 seasons — despite, like most teams, investing more in the offensive side.

There’s more than one reason for that, but a significant part of their success falls within the scheme of defensive coordinator Steve Spagnuolo.

That scheme is known for its complexity. Justin Reid said it was the deepest playbook he’d ever received.

But in its most simple explanation, the Chiefs trick people. With blitzes. With coverages. They fool quarterbacks regularly.

Go back and watch the game-sealing play of the AFC Championship Game against the Bills. Josh Allen was utterly stunned by a blitz. He said as much.

That trickery only works when the players understand the layers of the system on a detailed level. It’s why it can be difficult, though certainly not impossible, for rookies to be ready to roll in Week 1.

Bolton accelerates the process on the front end, and he implements it on the back end. Spagnuolo has said that Bolton is not only capable of digesting a call but good and quick enough to change it at the line. In the same way you might see a quarterback survey a defense and audible to a different play, Bolton is returning the favor.

“If you’re going to be a multiple defense, that guy in the middle has to be great,” Spagnuolo said. “It’s like the center of the quarterback on defense, right? If you don’t have that guy, you can’t do all these things.”

The Chiefs have gotten a glimpse of it the last four years. They deemed it worthy of paying for another few years.

After one summer, before they’ve even put on a jersey for a preseason game, the rookies already have their glimpse of it too.

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