You must be remembering mathieu differently because in his last season he came close to single handedly destroying our entire defense. His attitude was so bad even Chris jones got dragged into it. Or do you not remember our defensive players fighting fans on social media.

No, Reid is not “known” for bringing in troubled players. Where does this come from? He doesn’t bring in angels but they do their homework on the risks he does take. And theyre usually not wrong. When he was asked if they’d bring in desean Jackson he specifically said he wouldn’t bring in guys who would hurt the locker room. And you know why he said that? Do people not realize that his last two diva WRs played a huge hand in destroying his career in Philly? Reid is one of the best locker room coaches in the league and TO and desean basically nuked it and turned him into a clown.

The reason Andy is the best in the game at building locker rooms is because he cares about who he puts into it.

He certainly showed an elite level ceiling.

Meanwhile Skyy Less’ ceiling is Craphonso Thorpe.

With the glory of hindsight everyone will be a hit.

Ya gotta think Andy and Veach had extensive discussions about Andy’s viewpoint in the way Terrell Owens impacted his Eagles teams. How he and McNabb went from peanut butter and Jelly to a complete shit sandwich. That HAD to play a role in them having Pickens either completely off their board, or at minimum lower than other teams. I doubt the ACL tear was a serious concern…but I’m sure it was a factor. I doubt it was as high up the list of why they felt the risks didn’t exceed the reward and it’s arguable that they were wrong.

The thought of a focused Pickens and Rice at receiver sure is a bummer.

I am 100% convinced Veach wanted to pick Alec Pierce with pick #54, hoping he would fall there. He was blindsided when Ballard snatched him with the pick prior so he settled for Moore. There is no doubt in my mind that Pierce was his guy.

If any of them were “his guy” Veach wouldn't have risked losing him to trade down a couple spots.

Seems he looked at the pocket of WRs (Pickens, Moore and Pierce) as all having warts on and off the field that could hurt their career outlook at the nfl level and made the mistake of drafting for need versus BPA and that decision is hurting us currently.

Is this thread gonna fire up every time this guy has a game?

This was probably the issue with Pickens.

https://steelersdepot.com/2023/12/ge...-short-routes/

Reid likes stretching the field horizontally and getting guys in space. We've had deep threat guys like MVS and Watkins but Reid wants his WRs to know all the positions and route trees. You can go find Watkins talking about that, how Reid pushed him to be more than a guy who just runs go routes. Pickens has been a guy who gets a lot of deep ball catches down the sideline. He's pretty open that he doesn't want to be running a lot of short routes.

Veach did have Pickens in at Arrowhead for a private workout/interview

https://www.bleedinggreennation.com/...ocker-room-per
For those who want to see the history. Everyone knows about the TO fiasco which single handedly destroyed a Super Bowl team. But Reid had a really hard time with desean Jackson. In case anyone wants to know why character matters. And to stop the myth that Andy Reid is some kind of Marvin lewis/tomlin guy who tries to save bad attitudes.

He’s had players who have given him hell which is why he pays close attention to it. But I’d rather a bad player you can quickly get rid of than a dickhead who divides a locker room. I’d love to have the dudes talent but while Reid may be iffy at times about WRs, he runs the best locker room in the nfl by a mile. You’ve gotta trust him when he wants nothing to do with a guys attitude

Yeah bro, toney totally had no locker room issues with the Giants.

Toney was a boom/bust trade that at worst would be a bandaid for a passing game that needed second half of the year help. Same reason we gave a shot to shady, Gordon and leveon. That’s different from a draft pick you try to build around. And Toney isn’t a bad dude… he’s just not always the most motivated.

Its not like Reid brings in only angels. But he does a ton of homework. Like he did with tyreek and kelce and josh Gordon. And like he undoubtedly did with Toney considering the last 2 major free agents he brought in came from Kafkas Giants

Agreed. Has to be the "interview" at Arrowhead that made them skittish about picking him and getting all that bad locker room baggage along with the talent.

It's not apples to apples but I've interviewed 100's of candidates. I can tell within 5 minutes if they would fit in with the rest of the techs in the shop. We have rejected people with elite skills just because they didn't fit with our team. That has to happen in every company.

Why wouldn't Andy and Veach consider that too when evaluating bringing in talent to the team?

Damn, all that on only 4 rec.