Yes. To go back to my Russell Wilson argument...

He won a superbowl where he averaged 174 yards per game in the playoffs! If the Seahawks can win a superbowl like that, why can't we? Alex Smith currently averages 291 yards, 3 touchdowns, and 0 Ints in the playoffs.

We are absolutely a superbowl contender.

These negative posters hate facts, and ignore them.

This team is being built just like Seattle's and Alex was the same kind of player back in 2011 on a talented SF team.

Yes.

An Alex Smith team that had less talent than this one was a muffed punt away from a Super Bowl. In an AFC with a slowly decaying Peyton Manning and a Patriots team that just suffered massive FA defections, only the Steelers can credibly be seen as a surefire offensive juggernaut. The Chiefs are right there with every other very talented but flawed team in the conference. Yes, they can absolutely get to the SB and it wouldn't take any miracles to get there.

I'm not inclined to get into another ****ing Alex Smith discussion, but to say that a team simply cannot contend for a SB with Alex Smith is just 100% devoid of reason.

Again, if you're 3 seasons into this and you're still starting every season with 'who cares, Alex Smith is still here', then you really should step away from the team until he's not. I was wholly prepared to do it with Pioli. I'm doing it with the Blues as well. If you're completely fatalist about a franchise then you cannot derive any joy from it. If that's the case...walk away.

California Chiefs shit doesn't do anything to foster further discussion. It doesn't do anything to encourage discourse or even reasoned disagreement. It's just more Eeyore bullshit. It's not 'intelligent analysis' or proof of anyone's knowledge as a football fan - it's just being a goth kid.

Enjoy dressing in black but don't flatter yourself into believing that your side of this particular discussion is any more enlightened than it's polar opposite.

I don't want to turn this thread into another AS bitch fest so I will only say that I think it is unfair to compare AS to RW. RW is a dynamic player something that AS isn't. I would like AS if he wasn't so risk averse but that is who he is and he isn't going to change.

Newsflash: Alex Smith reads Chiefsplanet and is sorely disappointed in all of your comments.

He has beef.

But that doesn't matter. Bottom line is that Russell Wilson has won a superbowl in a post season where he averaged 174 yards per game and had 103 yards in the first game.

Alex Smith shits on both of those numbers in the playoffs. He scored 43 points, had 400+ total yards and 3 TDs in our last playoff game without Jamaal Charles or Knile Davis and people still act like we can't win with him. Wtf?

I don't think Alex Smith is as good as Russell Wilson. The real argument is that Alex Smith has actually played pretty well in the playoffs when he got there. He played out of his mind against the Colts, regardless of the people who want to blame the offense for that loss.

And when he was with San Francisco he went toe to toe in an offensive shootout with Brees and won. And not only that, threw a clutch TD pass with seconds to go for the win. There are a lot of QBs who never do either of those things in the playoffs.

Does that mean he can repeat it again? I don't know. He may not. But I don't think he's Matt Cassel either, and that's how he's treated on this board. Anyone who says this is a homer-filled board is full of it.

:popcorn:

But regardless, it's unbridled homerism to look at the roster as it stands today and think it's going to be this massive improvement over last season.

There's only one WR that warrants concern from defenses to go along with Jason Avant and a slew of boom-or-bust developmental projects. That's pretty much the exact same dynamic that was in play last season; the only difference Maclin has a much more athletic skillset than Bowe and -in theory- should be an upgrade. But that depends on if he'll actually be thrown to and if those passes are completed beyond the LoS.

Kelce is the only TE on the team that has any sort of consistency; Harris is a huge project and O'Shaughnessy is slightly less of a project. Fasano sucked relative to what he was paid and how much attention he got, but it was obvious that the team needs two TEs that can both catch and block for the offense to work and it's hard to see how that unit is any better than last year.

Fisher is likely to be the only starter on the offensive line that's returning from last year, and he'll likely be the second best player in that unit along with Grubbs. Center, guard and the other tackle are complete ****ing question marks. That's not likely to be an upgrade to the point that it elevates the rest of the offense to succeed (quantifiable measures or otherwise) and could very well look as bad as it did last year.

Defensively the roster is about the same, though there is the assumption Peters will probably work his way into the lineup as a starter or at least a pseudo-starter as a nickel against pass-happy teams and that Tyvon Branch will bring another option in varied safety packages. The issue with the defense is going to be whether or not the torn Achilles duo of Johnson and DeVito can play close to the level they were capable of prior to injury, if there's another ILB worth a damn in run stopping and if Houston isn't lagging behind to the start the season if he misses all of the preseason (and if he doesn't decide to sit out for as many games as he pleases as a '**** you' to Dorsey and Reid). They could be historically great as they were in stretches last year, but that's a lot of supposition on based on the aforementioned variables. They'll be good barring some unforeseeable issues, but counting on the defense to never give up 30+ points or carry an average of allowing fewer than 18 points a game is also unbridled homerism.

Special teams are a wash IMO. As long as they don't outright lose you a game, then everything else is gravy and that's pretty much not going to happen with Toub as coach.

And that's about all there is to really say about the team in a vacuum; there's a lot more to suggest that this year's team will look a lot like last year's than there is to suggest an improvement.

Of course, nobody is actually going to read this because we're on CP and criticizing the poster rather than the post is the name of the game anymore.

I'd agree I'm not convinced this offense will be better than last year. Reid seems to get the most out of what he has though, so I'm sure this year will be no different. Maclin is probably a better fit for Reid's offense than Bowe... but will he be able to carry the water as a #1? We'll find out.

I don't think you can really say anything about Dorsey because he has no prior history with regards to his current position, but I'm not sure there's a lot of reason to be particularly confident in or hopeful about Andy Reid. In his last ten seasons as head coach, he has two 11-win seasons, two 10-win seasons, two 9-win seasons, two .500 seasons and two seasons below .500. So while I wouldn't tie myself to the "4-12 is more likely than 10-6" comment I do consider 10 wins to be the lowest bar to set (meaning you should expect at least 10 wins/season from a successful franchise), and Reid just hasn't reached that level of success over the last decade. He certainly hasn't been anywhere close to what what he was with Philly from '99 to '04.

Maybe that'll change. Maybe it won't. I don't think the Chiefs are a bad team right now, but at the same time I also don't see a reason (yet) to believe they're even positioned to become the top team in the AFC West, much less one of the top teams in the AFC, poised to break the playoff drought.

But that's just one opinion, and it might change during camp.

(As far as OTW leaving, I almost never comment on that kind of stuff and won't now)

Funny, that tends to happen when people post epic dipshittery, post after post after post after post.

Then you are back to the tinfoil hat stuff about Clark Hunt being a dictator over the day to day operations of the team, or him ordering people not to take any risks, or him not being interested in the super bowl because he's only interested in making money (as if those two are exclusive).

One thing you can't say is that Clark Hunt won't hold people accountable, because he's cleaned house twice and gone through several head coaches since he took the reins.

When absolutely horrible takes like this are made consistently, you deserve to be called a dumbass.

I won't blanket say that AS can't be a part of SB team but he won't be the main reason why. It will require the defense to carry the team most likely because he is just not going to change who is. :shrug:

But I am willing to be that the Chiefs won't sniff a SB with AS as the QB.

What in the actual ****?

Really? So to stay the same as last year, Grubbs and Maclin would need to provide NO improvement over McGlynn and Bowe. DJ will have to provide NO improvement over Mauga. Peters and/or Gaines will have to provide NO improvement over the Fleming/Cooper duo (oh, and Fleming can't improve either). DeVito will have to provide NOTHING. Fulton, Morse, Allen AND Stephenson will have to either show no improvement or not be better than Ryan Harris was last season. Kelce will have to show no growth. Wilson will have to be worse than Avery/Hemmingway. Ford will have to show no growth. Fisher will have to show no growth.

We declined in one single area - Hudson. One spot. We added talent in several key spots and can expect some development in others.

In the end, weird stuff happens in this game and perhaps all of those things will take place and we won't get better. But to sit there as of today and say "there's more evidence we'll be the same than there is that we'll get better" is just categorically false. There's a TON of evidence to suggest we'll improve.