Why wait? Deal him now before his value drops even more!

Deal him for a bag of Cheetos for all I care.

The fans at the games at Arrowhead need to start chanting - WE WANT MAHOMES, WE WANT MAHOMES. Who cares if Alex Smith's feelings get hurt at this point? Alex Smith looks lost and the season is slipping away. If Andy Reid sticks with Alex Smith we need get get the banners flying over the stadium just like when they kept forcing Matt Cassel on us. If John Dorsey was still the GM you think this current slide would be happening?

We'd be approaching Philly fan level for doing that.

Five years removed from the banner. In terms of trying to force change from a FO, KC burned that capital on Pioli and it's gonna take some time to build it back up.

I just had a thought. Perhaps Andy is sticking with Alex to demonstrate to Patrick Mahomes that Andy will give him every chance possible to succeed.

"Go out and play, kid. You saw how loyal I was to Alex, don't worry about your job, just go out and let it fly."

At least I hope to god that's what he's doing.

This sounds extremely concerning to me.

That sounds like an extremely Chiefs thing to do for me. Giving up on a season out of loyalty and stupidity.

ROFL:clap:
Ecellent!

And just imagine one change at quarterback will raise everybody’s level of play!

https://uploads.tapatalk-cdn.com/201...2df81946dd.jpg


Opened up espn app to check scores and boom this.

Mahomes looked very good in preseason. He couldn't be taking that big of a step back in practices.

I think this has everything to do with the Chiefs being loyal to Alex and nothing to do with what they think of Mahomes.

I'm not sure he'll play this year, but there was no way they played him today. I don't think they'll bring him into a game cold unless Alex gets hurt. I think when they do start him, they will want to give him the week with the 1s and build a gameplan around him.

They basically spent two 1st round picks on the guy, I don't think they're going to just wing it and "see what they got."

Those same people thought Alex Smith was a franchise QB. They aren't the final word. Mahomes can complete simple passes. That instantly makes the offense much, much better.

LMAO

That would be great. I'm with you on that particular hope.

^^^^Both of these.

<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-lang="en"><p lang="en" dir="ltr">I think every situation is unique. As bad as Alex has played recently, the Chiefs trust him. Mahomes was drafted w/the idea of playing him next season. This offense is designed for Alex. Mahomes will get his own offense next season <a href="https://t.co/2Mmm97LYfA">https://t.co/2Mmm97LYfA</a></p>&mdash; Geoff Schwartz (@geoffschwartz) <a href="https://twitter.com/geoffschwartz/status/934926115709313024?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">November 26, 2017</a></blockquote>
<script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>

This seems to be a very revealing tweet.

The offense as currently constructed is completely molded around Smith.

Andy doesn't do things half ass I'm guessing. He wants an entire offense molded around Mahomes before he gives him the reigns.

I don't get that reasoning at all.

There's no ****ing point of Mahomes being the backup and getting familiarized with "Smith's" offense if they're going to scrap that offense in a year's time anyway.

.... what's the point of getting younger players like Chesson, Conley, Hill, Hunt and Kelce familiarized with the playbook if they're going to have to relearn and get acclimated to very likely an entirely different one the year after? Hasn't the Narrative(TM) been that all of the contributors in an offense need weeks' if not months' of time to just get a basic understanding of Reid's offense down before they can even begin to get familiar enough in it to become key roleplayers?

They wanted to shine up that Chrystler Lebaron to get best possible trade in value.

Too bad the piece of shit broke down on the way to Carmax.

If they need to tool an offense specifically for Smith and then retool it for Mahomes the year later, then they are basically conceding at least two seasons if not more of being postseason contenders.

What in the mother of ****...

That's how I see it. I think the Chiefs saw an opportunity to usher Smith out respectfully (with minimal backlash from the team or fans) while giving Mahomes lots of time to develop. Everything in the tea leaves sounded like the Chiefs have known for a very long time that Alex is gone next year. Neither they or anyone here ever expected it to go this badly.

They were probably doing that whether Mahomes played this year or not. That's just the nature of drafting a 1st round QB. I don't think a rookie QB has ever even been to a Super Bowl. There have certainly been rookies to get into the playoffs and have success, but they often have elite running attacks and defenses to support them, and they usually get knocked out by a more experienced QB. Even if Mahomes turns out great he'll probably have to take some lumps to get there.

I don't see how they're conceding next season. I doubt it's going to be hard for anyone to learn a new offense.

Smith is a piece of trash, he doesn't deserve any respect. The fact that he has the physical capability to be a good quarterback but is too much of a pussy to do anything erases any respect he deserves.

Bullshit.

The WCO is a really difficult scheme to learn. I'm sure they'll transition to more of a Spread/Air Raid. If the offensive personnel can run a WCO, they can run another offense. You think it's new for a team to walk into a season with a new scheme?

I don't get where you're even going. Teams are absolutely going to tool their Offense to highlight strength of their starting QB and mask weaknesses. Do you think this is a KC specific thing? Because lol.

That's because you don't understand what he's talking about.

Getting familiarized with the offense isn't about memorizing plays, it's about learning the terminology and the concepts of the offense. Reid has shown that he will mold the offense to the quarterback. That's why the offense he used with McNabb had far more of a vertical element, and the one he used with Smith was a horizontal one.

Reid is always going to use West Coast terminology and verbiage in his offense, but elements of the offense, including route combinations, will be molded to fit Mahomes once he is the starter, but that alteration is not going to reerun his growth, nor will it require any sort of a learning curve.

For example, this first 52 page of this 67 page PDF is about terminology of the WCO:

http://www.playbookexchange.net/play...-WestCoast.pdf


This, roughly, is the kind of stuff he is learning this year.

Where the hell are people are getting the idea that they will be learning a whole new Offense?

yeah, "new offense" is used pretty loosely. It's not like we're changing coordinators. Certainly not as hard to learn as Discuss is thinking it will be.

More or less Andy will have Pat pick out some plays from his base book he likes to run and some he hates. He'll scrap the ones Pat hates and take the ones he likes and add variants of them to flesh out more of a Mahomes system.

The bigger changes will be more about personnel. The idea discuss thinks 2 full years of Chiefs Football was all for nothing over this is hilarious.

Discuss is miserable and wants everyone else to be miserable. Once you understand that, you'll understand his posting style.

The WCO is a complex terminology, for sure. So while I do understand the reasoning for Mahomes to not play this year due to the complexness of the WCO, the flip side of the argument is, wouldn't the learning curve somewhat speed up if he were to apply it to a real live game situation instead of learning it on the classroom with no on-the-job learning experience?

If the Chiefs were 8-3 instead of 6-5, even with Smith's struggles right now, I can see the reasoning of not putting him into it because of the 8-3 record. The end result would still most likely be bounced out of the playoffs in a Wild Card round. But unfortunately, they are not 8-3 and with Smith's struggles on top of that, it just makes it frustrating to watch, considering most of everybody knows that the end result will most likely either be one and done, or possibly (if they keep losing) missing the playoffs.

So why not give the kid a chance? There is similar precedent, the 2004 NYG team where they were 5-2, but Kurt Warner was struggling and was benched in favor of Eli Manning. They did miss the playoffs that year, but it paid dividends down the road.

Wentz is doing it. :shrug:

Hell, if it is that hard, why tell him the play in the headset and have him repeat it. Give him one of those forearm band playlist things, and tell him "page 3, play 5" and let him read it to the team. If he knows the keywords... which he should by now... that shouldn't be a problem.

Houston changed their entire offense on the fly with Watson during the season then had to change it back for that statue Tom Savage. It can be done.

Bingo, we have a winner!

I know this will be an unpopular opinion. Here's what I saw in Patrick mahomes. Kid could have a terrific career as big Ben right now. Never know how to read a defense but can freelance like crazy. Big Ben for most of his career held on to the ball for 10seconds. It wasn't until haley came along 10 years later and forced him to run an offense with Ben kicking and screaming that he changed. That's fine... But big Ben got clobbered. I don't want mahomes to get clobbered.

Other qbs like him... McNabb couldn't stay healthy. Brett Favre went an entire career hopped up on painkillers. Aaron rodgers of all these guys seemed to find the best balance of staying healthy. I'd like him to become more rodgers than big Ben. And that starts with forcing him to learn how to be a qb before he realizes he can get away with constantly freelancing. Anyway... I know thats unpopular. But I think he can learn more on the bench right now than on the field.

I don't see how throwing him to the wolves on a bad football team running an offense tailored to a different quarterback is going to 'speed up the learning curve'.

Smiths last game is vs NYJ pending a win

Mahomes will start vrs Oakland

Bet not.

I'm down for a bet.

This will be absolute hell week for Andy and Chiefs PR, if we see another game like yesterday vs the Jets, the amount of embarrassing boos at home will be deafening against our rival.

They will save face and make the move.

I wouldn't do it. Reid has proven far too stubborn to make a bet like that.

But, to each his own! :)

Since the day Andy acquired him, Alex has never had competition for the starting spot. Mahomes hasn't changed that. There was never a competition for the #1 QB spot. Mahomes wasn't groomed to start this year.

Taking Smith out of the equation, the offense is not in synch. Too many penalties. Bad play calling. Can't run block for their lives. You had two receivers trying to catch the same screen pass yesterday. The final INT was a miscommunication between Smith and the WR.

Don't blame Smith for the state of the team. Smith is the same QB that Harbaugh "fixed" 5 years ago. He. Is. What. He. Is. Blame the head coach/offensive coordinator for riding this shit show.

This is the best case I’ve seen for continuing with Smith.

Good points, but I'm going 50/50 on this one. In this modern league, the QB is more important than ever before. Take the responsibilities we held the QB to in the 1990's? And multiply by 100. That's where we're at.
If Smith is out of sync, the whole offense and by extension the entire TEAM becomes "out of sync". Smith's "lack of sync" has spread to the entire unit and the result is lazy, sloppy, and "we give up"-football.
I witnessed the defense stay on fire and save Smith's bacon for 4 seasons prior to this one, and Smith wasn't able to reciprocate until it was much too late.
Any team, like any business, should be moving in two directions; forward and up. The Chiefs are backsliding.

Which is great right up until the point where he has to try and read a defense.

Yeah, Smith sucks. Thing is, why hate on him. If the Chiefs asked me to play QB for millions of dollars a year I'd happily do it. I'd suck, but I'd do it. It's not Alex Smith's fault that he sucks and he's still the QB of the team. That falls on Reid. CP should be filled with Reid sucks threads rather than Alex sucks threads. Shame on this organization for sticking with guys too long. I'm not of the opinion that the Alex Smith trade was a bad one. Hell, he gave the Chiefs several winning seasons, and a couple of playoff wins which we hadn't seen here in quite a while. But now, the new Sherrif is in town, and it's time to get rid of Smith. I'm done bashing Alex. I'm bashing Reid from here on out until he gives the young kid a chance, ALA Jared Goff, DeShawn Watson, etc.

I second that!

I agree with all of this, but Alex brought us...one playoff win (not two). One epic playoff collapse. Two typical Chiefs playoff losses.

Sorry, but Alex Smith doesn't get the benefit of the doubt on an imaginary playoff win. Not after yesterday.

To be fair, if we follow your logic, CP should be filled with "Hunt sucks" threads. He's the one who hired Pioli, Dorsey, Reid, et. al. If we blame Reid for Smith then we have to blame Hunt for Reid.

This article says it all to me....

The Chiefs Have Been Figured Out

When a good team loses, people wonder aloud if there’s now a blueprint for how to beat them. Usually it’s overblown, if not outright nonsensical. But every once in a while, it’s legitimate. Like right now, and the blueprint to beat the Kansas City Chiefs.

On October 15, the Chiefs took the field against Pittsburgh with a 5-0 record. They had been averaging an NFL-best 32.8 points a game, and Alex Smith was deemed an early MVP candidate. That day, however, the Steelers beat the Chiefs 19-13. Alex Smith had 246 yards thanks to some fluky, late-in-the-down big plays, but overall Kansas City’s offense had been stymied. And it has remained stymied. Since the Steelers’ plane touched down in K.C., the Chiefs are 1-5. They’re averaging 18 points per game during that stretch, including their 10-point performance in defeat at home against a reeling Bills team on Sunday.

So what blueprint did the Steelers set? A passive one. Instead of attacking Smith and Co., they stayed back in soft zone coverage. They kept everything in front of them and rallied to the ball. It was a simple, but brilliant, approach.

The gadgets and gimmicks that comprise Andy Reid’s offense, the tools they had used to light up the Patriots in Foxboro on opening night, suddenly stopped working. The misdirection that had given opponents fits, with ploys like speedy Tyreek Hill racing one way and the ball optioning back another, became null. If defenders don’t match up and follow offensive players, then those gadgets and misdirections are less effective. Instead of following Hill (or any Chiefs player) and becoming out-leveraged pawns against Reid’s designs, defenders now guard an area of the field, forcing Reid to play to them.

Against the Chiefs, it’s especially important that edge defenders play with zone integrity. This includes cornerbacks underneath. Those are the men who handle Hill on the perimeter and force Smith to read a suddenly shrunken field inside.

So yes, there’s a blueprint. How do the Chiefs respond? Some are calling for first-round rookie quarterback Patrick Mahomes to take over. But the only reason Reid would bench Smith is if the head coach truly believed that those gadgets and misdirection concepts can never work again. Because if Reid went with the more talented but inexperienced Mahomes, he’d have to throw out much of those concepts, along with many of his multi-progression designs. At Texas Tech, Mahomes played in a spread offense, which, notably, he ran with very little discipline. Raw sandlot playmaking prowess works in college, but it does not transfer to the NFL—not as a quarterback’s foundation, anyway. It will take at least an offseason (and probably more) for Mahomes to develop the awareness and discipline to run a full-fledged NFL offense, particularly one as comprehensive as Reid’s.

What the Chiefs must do in the here and now is punish defenses for playing zone. You do that by going for big plays. Re-establishing a sustainable ground and screen game with rookie running back Kareem Hunt is important, sure, but the threat of steady, sustained drives is not what worries defensive coordinators—especially coordinators who are playing zone. Big plays worry them. And it’s that worry that will drag defensive play-callers away from soft zones, giving Kansas City’s foundational misdirection and gadgetry a chance to start working again.

You beat zones by attacking them vertically. Instead of aligning Hill and all-world tight end Travis Kelce all over the formation and finding creative ways to get them the ball, align those two together on the same side and run them downfield against the same zone defender. In football parlance, that’s called sending “two through a zone.” It forces zone defenders to make either-or decisions.

Most of this occurs near the seams and middle of the field, where you’re facing safeties and linebackers. In that scenario, even when the defender is right his result can still be wrong, given that few safeties and linebackers can match up with Kelce, and none can match up with Hill. One or two big plays like this and the Chiefs can get a defense adjusting (or even abandoning) its zone coverages.

For Kansas City, the tricky part with this approach is that you bump into some of Smith’s limitations. A quarterback must throw with velocity and anticipation when attacking zone coverage downfield. That has never been Smith’s game. There was a play in the first half of the Buffalo loss that made the rounds on Twitter. Kelce got open on a deep “over” route, running diagonally across the field. Smith didn’t target him. Instead, he threw underneath the instant the pocket started to crumble. To hit Kelce, Smith would have had to climb up in that crumbling pocket and throw from an unideal platform. That takes arm strength that Smith doesn’t have. When the action gets messy around Smith, his instinct has always been to tuck the ball and look for space. That throw to Kelce would have also required some anticipation, which Smith—smart as he is—rarely throws with. Generally Smith must see an open receiver before turning it loose.

This probably doesn’t sound like a great case for keeping Mahomes on the bench and Smith on the field, but remember: With strong pass protection, Smith has been more than serviceable for Kansas City in recent years, including on downfield zone-beating designs. (For example, ask the Texans how fun it is to play Cover 4 against Smith.) And if the zone-beating designs are really sharp—which, with Reid’s knack for forecasting coverages, they often are—then Smith can get your offense functioning on-schedule snap after snap. You almost certainly would not get that with a 22-year-old Mahomes.

But again, Smith needs space for this to work. A lot rides on Kansas City’s O-line, which has been up and down. The misdirection and gadgetry naturally slowed defenses early in the year, aiding that line. But since defenses have started playing straight zone, their pass rushes have been more decisive and destructive. The Chiefs face five dangerous pass rushing teams to finish out the schedule:

• The Jets, who have no edge rushers but can collapse your pocket inside
• The Raiders, who have grossly underachieved in their four-man rush but still have Khalil Mack and Bruce Irvin
• The Chargers, who have the league’s best edge-rushing tandem in Joey Bosa and Melvin Ingram
• The Dolphins and all of the stunts and twists they do with their strong defensive tackles and limber ends
• And the Broncos, who build around the game’s best defensive player, Von Miller.

It’s imperative Kansas City’s O-line rise to these challenges and give its veteran quarterback the space he needs. If it doesn’t, then a conversation about Mahomes must commence earlier than they would like.

https://sports.yahoo.com/chiefs-figured-082052935.html

So we're going back to the same stadium that Alex couldn't play in 2 weeks ago with the same weather that forced ducks into the ground.
Weather is projected to be cloudy, below 50 with wind.

This will not end well.

Chiefs not considering benching Alex Smith for Patrick Mahomes this season
 

It should be an awesome sight of biffness

Terminology and learning a phonebook of plays is one thing.

Having the receivers and the QB know how to change a route based on what they read from the defense and having all parties on the same page once the ball is snapped is an entirely different thing.

Hunt does suck.

Smiff's "knowledge" of the offense means nothing when he won't THROW THE MOTHER****ER!!!

Wrong. Hunt up the middle every ****ing first down of a series is what sucks.

Eventually you do get there. I’m not on board with firing Reid, yet, though. Regardless of what happens this year, I want to see next year with Reid and Mahomes.

I agree. That's not a ringing endorsement for Reid. I was never gung ho about him to begin with. But I think he and mahomes will be a great match.

This is about money.

NFL teams keep all non-ticket revenue from playoff games.

That can be as high as 2 million dollars (if you're the Patriots).

Additionally, NFL teams DON'T pay the players during the postseason. The league pays the players.

Home playoff game = sweet sweet cash = keep trotting out $mith until we're no longer leading the division

So we're literally stuck having to root for the Chargers or Raiders to take 1st place before ignorant Andy will make the switch. What a stupid season this has become.

The team owner definitely shouldn't be running the ball,that's true

The Jets game is going to be the key game. If Smith shits the bed and we lose....then the pressure could force Andy to make the switch. We'd be tied with the Chargers (when they beat the Browns). I don't see Smith beating the Raiders the next week and the Chargers get the Redskins.

He was talking about clark.

I am not getting my hopes up for a change.

It is literally the only reason I am still watching this shit team, so that I dont miss Mahomes first NFL snaps. I think it is a lost cause this year. Reid is too much of a pussy to make the change.

It's not happening.

And frankly it seems the conspiracy theories are a bit overblown. If they see Mahomes in practice every week making amazing throws but looking like a middle schooler trying to take college classes when it comes to learning a pro-style offense, then they are right to be nervous about throwing him out there. It is entirely possible that he could get into the game and simply have no clue what to do.

Does Alex look like he has a clue? **** it, sandlot this shit if you have to, I don't give a ****.

I know, you're not there yet fatass? you have other shit to do? What the flying ****?!!!!

The Chiefs used 2 1st rounders for this kid. Reid is a QB genius. If Mahomes isn't grasping the offense at this point Reid has horrific judgement on QBs AND the genius label is fraudulent.

I think the QB genius label went out of the window long time ago with his bad judgment on Alex.

I wouldn't go that far yet. It was pretty well agreed even among the people who liked Mahomes that he was a pretty raw prospect. Way less polished and experienced compared to someone like Watson, but much more physical talent.

If thats the case, then bring on Bray to give us a vertical element... something HAS to change

I certainly don't hold this opinion, but I think it needs to be asked if we made the wrong decision taking Mahomes over Watson? Why is Watson able to come in week 1 and hit the ground running? You'd think them making Mahomes the backup would show that they were pleased with his progress, but it seems like they have no trust in him at all. I'm not really sure what to think about all of this.

Don't get worked up over it. Mahomes was the less polished/higher ceiling prospect. I'd imagine if Tom Savage was the Chiefs QB we would have already seen Mahomes but there was no reason to rush him when you have an established starter who can get you into the playoffs. I think we're to the point where you could throw him out there but Reid knows once you make the switch there's no going back, so Mahomes needs to do well. I'm over Alex Smith at this point but that's no reason to mess with Mahomes development. That's a panic move.

<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-lang="en"><p lang="en" dir="ltr">Reid: &quot;Alex is my guy.&quot;</p>&mdash; Terez A. Paylor (@TerezPaylor) <a href="https://twitter.com/TerezPaylor/status/935212783800672256?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">November 27, 2017</a></blockquote>
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posted this in another thread, but it probably belongs here.

Personally, I think he would do fine. Definitely better than Smith the last few games. However, I think there is reluctance to start him because Andy runs a complex offense and Mahomes probably doesn't have it all down yet. He would then have to go more vanilla with his play calling and once teams got tape on PM then it would mean some trouble for the offense.

Where that logic is flawed is that PM2 has the play making potential of Brett Favre or so Andy has been on record comparing him too so play the kid and see if he can sling it all over and to the superbowl.

**** it, Alex Smith isn't taking this team anywhere and that is fact. If you lose to the Giants and then lay the egg he just did yesterday against a average at best Bills team you aren't doing shit. Both of those losses are square on Smith and no one fears him.

Stack the box and play zone and beat the Chiefs. Replace Smith with a Gunslinger and that doesn't work anymore its as simple as that.

I'm just to the point where I don't expect any resolution for a long time still. Alex is likely going to start the rest of the season regardless of his performance. I also would put money on him still being on the roster going into OTAs and Andy will still be towing the company line of "He's our guy." I don't expect this torture to ever end.

Well, we can't devalue Smith's trade value or have a QB controversy...or success for that matter.

Success is in the stands, and don't you forget it, mister!