Well, for one you get a premium pass rusher in his prime playing his ass off for a contract again.

Ford is obviously a really good player. He's a bit flawed for sure, but with as much as teams are in sub sets and as much as teams pass the ball, pass rushers are hard to come by.

I think he's incredibly overrated, and that there is little chance he's here. You should just prepare yourself. But it'll be okay.

I don't really care either way, but if the Chiefs think they're as close as they apparently do, i'm not sure they'll be trading away one of their best assets on D.

If someone is going to give you a first for him, sure, trade him away.

I don't know how you can say he's "incredibly overrated" in one breath and expect a team to give up a first AND a big contract for him in another. Kinda contradicts each others.

because people see the sack totals and think he awesome.

He's not. He also has an injury history. He's a liability in every facet of the game except speed rush. That's it. That's all he is.

But somebody with a bunch of cap room is going to pony up.

The Chiefs think they're close because of their offense, and they're right.

There's nobody on that defense that's untouchable other than Jones.

We need to start thinking like the Patriots do.

People do, sure.

Do you think other teams are that way as well?

Other teams may have tons of cap space, or may be desperate for pass rushers, or both.

Sure, but why would they give that up for a guy that's this overrated and just not very good?

Because they have tons of cap space and are desperate.

Stop trying to make sense of it. It doesn't make sense. But teams do it every year.

His run defense improved this year. His backside pursuit on runs was very good. Plus, you are overlooking his forced fumbles this year. Giving Mahomes extra possessions is huge. Pressures, hits, sacks, forced fumbles are extremely important to a team. Especially a team that has an explosive offense that jumps to a lead and can get its D in position to pin their ears back and rush the QB.

Hard to do that when teams are going to be running the ball right at Ford because he’s the weak spot.

Honest question, have you seen rushing numbers that indicate KC's rush defense was much weaker to his side of the field? I know the Pats ran a lot to their right, not at Ford.

The run d was terrible everywhere. Left, right, center, forward, backward sideways etc.

Ford isn't a good run defender. With his pass rush though, you just need him to be adequate

Looking at last year though with all the trades, the Chiefs need to be proactive there. If you could get a safety or a DL for a fifth rounder for instance, do it.

In terms of Ford, he led the league in pressures from the edge and was second in forced fumbles.

He had a damn fine year.

Now, it was a contract year, so i'd be extremely hesitant to pay that much for him, but the tag seems pretty likely.

In terms of Ford hes also like 27 years old. Youre basically paying a premium price for his late twenties/early thirties. Chiefs did that with Houston and Berry and got burned badly.

Yep and Ford comes with an early-career injury history that's actually worse than either one of them.

They already have two albatross contracts on the books (Houston and Berry). I wonder if how those played out will have any bearing on what they do with Ford.

Which is why nobody is talking about a long term deal.

It’s tag and trade or tag and take advantage of him playing his ass off for a contract again then tag and trade next year (or let him walk for a comp pick).

Andy has always been more conservative (as seen recently by his hire of Spags). He mentioned in the Nate Taylor article that he thinks it’s Super Bowl or bust in 2019.

He seems like the kind of guy who wants to keep as much talent as he can for this run instead of trying to fill that spot with an unknown rookie.

Starting to feel like their plan is approaching Houston about his contract, keeping Ford on the tag one more year, making some other cuts, signing 1 name FA and hitting the draft hard.

The only way that the Ford tag makes sense....is if Houston takes a pay cut. Otherwise....we aren't affording shit on the FA market.

I'm not sure that's necessarily a bad thing anyway.

They've gotta lock down some of their own guys first anyway but they haven't had the best luck with free agents anyway.

They spent big on them last offseason, so they may need a bit of a reset.

There are a ton of people here that say you absolutely cannot let him go, no matter the offer. They may not be talking about long-term deals now but the inevitable consequence of tagging him and not trading him is that they'll be pretty much forced next season to pay him or let him go. Tagging him again, at his age with his injury history, just isn't smart.

I’m only saying tag and trade if it’s possible. If not, you let him walk.

Yeah, I get that.

I'm just saying there's a lot of people here saying the he had 13 sacks and you don't let that get away for any reason. Like the defense is going to collapse without him.

This is entirely correct with the caveat that such practices almost demand that you have at least one Super Bowl under your belt to successfully implement them.

I don't have to tell you that players are cutting deals with BB under the assumption that their chances of competing in and winning a championship are far greater playing with NE than taking high dollar contracts in Detroit and Tampa Bay.

And in fact, certain FA's might deem their value even greater than market if they feel that their services may be key in getting the Chiefs "over the hump", so to speak. But again, I contend that what the Chiefs need are solid players with experience and discipline who won't LOSE a game for you, and whom you augment with whatever high-caliber players you can draft and develop as well as FA's who are amenable to working with your cap situation in exchange for the chance to compete on an ascending team.

I think its been dissected around here but tagging Ford isnt an option if the Chiefs want to do anything else this offseason.

While true, there’s some guys that could/need to take pay cuts.

The problem with tagging Ford is that, once he signs, you lose $14M in cap space. Now you HAVE to trade him or sign a new contract to free that up. Once that tender is signed, that amount is fully guaranteed and counts against the cap.

I've said this before, but if I am Veach, priority #1 for me to get Houston's agent on the phone and try to work out a three year extension (that will inevitably go to four years), where we can convert his $21M salary to a signing bonus this year and bring his cap number down to the $12-$14M range, never spiking above that.

As soon as I hang up the phone, I am calling John Dorsey. For the low low price of a second round pick and a new contract, you could pair Ford with Garrett and wreck the AFC North quarterback gauntlet.

Houston savings: $7-9M
Ford savings: $14M

Total cap space after these two moves: $53-$55M

Sign Tyreek Hill to his monster contract.

And then I'm going to suggest something that everyone will hate... you wait to sign Chris Jones. He's going into the last year of his contract. Let him play even bigger in the 4-3 and "prove it." If he destroys worlds, then great - you now have to pay him an assload. But frankly I would be wary about paying him before you know that he meshes with the new defense.

Worst case scenario - he sucks and you don't have to pay him.

Second worst case scenario - he destroys and you have to pay him Aaron Donald money or let him walk. Then you are back in the same situation as Ford. You tag him, look for a trade partner, or then let him walk, take your comp pick, and hope you can draft good players to come up behind and take his place for cheap.

I got no problem with any of this. I would PREFER to sign Jones but I don't HATE the though of letting it wait.

During the season, I was 100% on board with letting Ford walk.

He played better, then I was fine with him playing on the tag for a year.

Now the obvious answer is to tag and trade him. It doesn't make much sense to let him play on the 1-year tag, and I do NOT want to extend that injured piece of crap for the money he thinks he should get.

I kind of just want him off the team at this point. He's a very good player, but this contract bullshit is too much of a headache, and he's at best #3 on the priority list for getting extensions done.

Bold prediction: Chiefs won't be trading for any players. Only trading Ford away.

And I'm honestly ok with that. This team needs a ****ing HUGE influx of young talent and depth. While it would be nice to trade for an already established young CB....it might not be feasible at this point.

Better clarify. Any star players. Reclamation projects are probably likely.

Just in FA? I think we are for sure trading in the draft.

Can also see Veach trying to do more Cam Erving, Reggie Ragland type trades.

No way should Ford stay on this team. He's a very incomplete player. Houston can leave with his big contract as well. We need a new look and fresh legs.

Right.

He's just predicting there won't be any Hitchens/Watkins deals this offseason like there was last.

This.

Veach has clearly demonstrated his modus operandi as a GM. Find highly touted, disappointing players from lesser organizations and trust in superior coaching to get them up to their potential.

Cam Erving, Reggie Ragland, Kelvin Benjamin -- expect more lottery tickets to be purchased for 5-7th rounders. One could even throw Sammie Watkins in there.

Watch KC go for Justin Gilbert or Darqueze Dennard for pennies.

Charvarious Ward, Lordan Lucas

Just draft your CBs. It's not hard to do unless Veach tries to think too creatively like he did last year.

Clark should just hire a big scary dude who will smack Veach upside the head every time he gets the bright idea to reach on some Breeland Speaks mother****er with his top draft choices.

I can see it now. "We really liked Slowpoke Jones as a CB for our team. He's a former offensive lineman, so he will always have a great size advantage against bigger WRs. And the way our board fell, we believed he was the last of his tier, so we did everything possible to move up and grab him. We had our eyes on him the entire time, and one of our goals going into the draft was to make sure we did everything we could do to ensure he ended up a Kansas City Chief"

*big dude shows up*

*pounds Veach's skull into his torso*

*walks away*

I think it's smart, really. I think you have a better chance of getting a talented but underachieving player on the right track than turning late round talent into a frontline starter. As I've said in regards to Spagnuolo's defensive rankings, sometimes a situation just isn't a good one. Change of scenery can be all the difference.

Sometimes this completely backfires and pretty much ruins the season or at least becomes a huge liability when it fails:

Example: David Amerson

When the Chiefs have signed extensions to players in the past (and this is pretty customary in the league) the extension is tacked into the end of their current deal, so we will likely still get the cheap years from Jones and Tyreek.

The key is to not depend on those players. Only acquire them, throw them in the competition mix, and see what happens.

Erving and Ragland were post-training camp trades. While the positions they played weren't exactly loaded with talent (OL depth and ILB), they were cheap acquisitions that, if they failed, wouldn't **** us over any worse than what we had before they were acquired.

The Amerson story is just a ****ing weird one. He was signed pre-free agency because he was cut by his previous team. This was before the Alex Smith and Marcus Peters trades, so while it may have been the plan all along for us to acquire a starting CB by trading Smith while also getting rid of Peters, I'm pretty sure the move started out as, "Well, let's see what happens." But then we stood pat on the other free agency CBs... we didn't try to bring in other cheap reclamation project guys, and we decided we weren't desperate enough in training camp to sign Bashaud Breeland. And then our idiot GM took a hard pass until the 6th round on all the CB talent in the draft.

I agree it was weird. Hopefully, Veach has learned his lesson on that front. After one wave of FA and the draft, you need to know you have average starting talent at every spot, or at least a youngster that projects as such.

Here's another lesson the FRANCHISE needs to learn: When Oakland cuts its CB trash, STAY AWAY. No matter how appealing the potential or the talent or whatever it is that attracts you to that player.

That's twice now in recent memory that we've signed pre-free agency a former starting Oakland CB who got cut because he sucked (Stanford Routt) and said, "Eh, it's probably just because it's the Raiders."

When Oakland sends its players, they’re not sending their best. They’re sending players that have lots of problems, and they’re bringing those problems with us. They’re bringing broke dicks. They’re bringing uncoachable idiots.

And we should NOT assume that some are good players.

David Amerson actually WAS a good player though. He was one of the better CBs in the league 3 or so years ago. He's exactly the kind of guy you sign for nothing and hope he can get that back.

The Chiefs mistake wasn't signing Amerson, it was not doing anything as a contingency if it didn't work.

But some, I assume, are dicking down OJ's ex-wife.

one thing to consider, is that we have just entered a long window of opportunity with a once-in-a-generation talent at QB. Yes, we have 2 years on his rookie deal, but more important than that is that we need to set up long term organizational health and a plan for player development.

the traditionally expensive positions are QB, pass rusher, CB, LT, WR.
We've got a QB and QR 'bout to get paid. We have an unusual DT talent 'bout to get paid. We've got to figure out what we're going to do with Ford and Houston, one who already got paid, one 'bout to.

CB is a spot where we'll need to draft, develop, and then let them go before we have to pay that huge second contract. Your FA's have to be reclamation projects or less expensive positions.

We've got 3 picks in the first two rounds. Probably one more coming with a Trade and Tag for Ford.

We need a couple of corners and a DE/edge guy in those 3 picks. And they need to be hits.

OJ's ex wife is dead, yo. Way dead. There's movies about it.

But they have shown patterns of what you just described....

No contingency plan if it does not work. They just acquire a buy low piece and move on to the next or go months completely ignoring an issue until its too late

No contingency for Amerson
No contingency for Berry
No contingency for Hunt offseason issues. (they got bailed out by a scrap heap signing)

I would actually contend that they had a contingency for Hunt - Williams turned out to be the player they though he was, plus they drafted Williams as well. That's an example of getting it right.

They did draft Watts but he got injured. They obviously didn't do enough.

It's CB where they really screwed up. Signed Amerson and ended up having to replace him with Scandrick because they literally did NOTHING else.

Lol so when the Chiefs actually did what you want you call it getting bailed out?

They signed Williams, a good #2 in Miami, despite already having Ware.

Also, I don’t get some of you guys obsession with Amerson, considering he never played a down for us in the regular season. They cut him for Scandrick, who was clearly better, and then added Ward who eventually took over and looks like a potential starter (albeit it was too late, but that’s on Sutton IMO)

Look at the free agent CBs from that year though.

Malcom Butler, Trumaine Johnson and Kyle Fuller were your top 3. They reportedly offered a deal to Fuller and he signed with the Bears.

Because he was so bad in the preseason. It's just the nature of this place.

Amerson was one of the best CBs in the league before he was one of the worst. He's EXACTLY the kind of guy you sign to a prove it deal and see if he can return to form. It was a great low risk, high reward move which didn't pan out - a lot of them don't. But to act like it was some big boneheaded move is just silly. It was a GREAT move.

The bad move was not drafting somebody behind him to help. Instead when Amerson flamed out, they had to go back to the scrap heap for Scandrick.

mcaj just doesn’t ****ing get it dude.

I think we're all over the place in terms of the specific circumstances of each issue, and I don't think any of them are comparable to the Amerson situation. The Amerson thing has to do with filling a gaping huge hole in the starting lineup. Hell, you could even say it had to do with filling a self-manufactured gaping huge hole in the starting lineup.

The team had good reason to believe Berry and Hunt would be fine for the year based on the knowledge they had at the time. And in Eric Berry's case, the team DID spend a 4th round pick on a deep safety and a 3rd round pick on a weird tweener-type who could roam inside the box as a 3rd safety, even if that wasn't his listed position. And then they also did bring in Markus Golden to round out depth with some vet presence, more to bolster the bottom of the depth chart than to provide a suitable starting option in the case of Berry not being healthy. Yeah, they could have brought in one of those cheap veteran safeties with starting experience like Iloka, but they didn't. And even if they did, would you have labeled them an actual legit contingency plan?

And in Hunt's case, the team apparently was confident they didn't need to worry about his legal stuff based on what they were told. And if Hunt's playing status were in greater jeopardy last offseason, what would you propose the team do differently? They had a bunch of vet backups that they brought in and Spencer Ware was also healthy. It would have been dumb to spend big money on a backup RB even if it was looking grim for Hunt in the weeks after the police report in February of last year.

For whatever reason, due to misinformation, misdiagnosis, mishandling of the cap, or other reasons, the Chiefs didn't lock down their depth with known or at least promising guys at safety and RB. That's because they only get so many draft picks and only have so much room in the cap. It's the same problem that EVERY team faces. Yes, even the Patriots. Actually, ESPECIALLY the Patriots-- that's basically EXCLUSIVELY how the Patriots acquire their contingency plans. In any given year at the beginning of the offseason, you look at a Patriots roster and you see nothing but unprovens and question marks.

Those are different situations from the Chiefs depending on Amerson to be good when they decided to pass on CB talent until the 6th round of the draft last year. And it's way different than the Chiefs taking training camp fliers on disappointing young players from other teams and having them ride the bench until they maybe show something good or at least better than what is currently on the roster.

What about the draft? Breeland Speaks over any secondary player?

Jesus Christ man....that's been mentioned multiple ****ing times. We all pretty much questioned the pick when it happened.

The question becomes.....would Sutton have started him? Look how long it took for Speaks to get any meaningful snaps.

What reasons did they have to assume Berry was going to be 100 percent healthy based on his injury and health history. How is his resume NOT a red flag that screams: better have a contingency plan. Especially when staring safeties sat on the market for cheap. They ended up having to circle the wagons in desperation by signing Ron Parker in the 11th hour. How is that not oversight?

And Kareem Hunt? If youre telling me their good reason to believe nothing was wrong was to take his word at face value as gospel in todays climate and not being able to see the video wasnt a red flag then I dont know. Agree to disagree. They struck gold on a good player there anyway so its moot

Amerson is the biggest joker though. You know you cant win that one. Signed in February. Did nothing in FA or the draft. August rolls around, camp breaks, preseason starts...and its oh this guy is really terrible we cant go into the season like this lets bring in a slighlty just as bad bum in Scandrick cause theres nothing left. That position was a liability all year until it took Ward 4 months to learn Suttons complex playbook of a defense that gets beat like a drum.

They didnt have to end up with Scandrick and Parker but they did. They could have easily avoided that.

Well you cant just say heres 5 veteran CBs as the only options to sign which werent realistic when they also could have ya know, drafted one.

Ok what corner should they have drafted?

Not a lot of good starting rookie corners around the league this year either. Truth is, Ward was playing as good as any of them could have those last 3 weeks.

Hey, I agree. It was possible we weren't going to have Hunt and Berry. It was also possible they could get ACL'd. Or a nagging hamstring. Or cancer.

At that point you may as well treat it as, "Why didn't we have good depth behind Starter X, because when he got injured we started sucking!"

Because the NFL, that's why. If it were easy to have backup plans and cheap superstars all over the field that we could pencil in and count on being great from the moment they were acquired, then the Chiefs would have a Super Bowl by now.

Some of them you can prepare for better than others. The safety position had a shit ton of money put into it and we did draft dudes in the 3rd and 4th round. And at RB we had some players we've had success with in the past like Ware, and we also had a platoon of random dudes from other teams fighting it out in camp.

NOT the same thing as acquiring Amerson and then waiting until the 6th round to draft a corner.

I'm still bitter about Josh Jackson, since from Veach's own draft press conference, his 2nd round draft strategy amounted to basically "Breeland Speaks or bust!" If that was his mentality, then he could have used that strategy to move up for Jackson before the Packers took him the pick prior.

That's what I would have done, but for me it's not even about the Chiefs not valuing the player I wanted the way I did. It's more about the guy they DID value that highly such that they traded up to get him.

Yea and I liked Jackson and Davis/Oliver too, but the truth is neither one of those guys were making a difference THIS year. Also, like I said, Ward was playing as good as any of those guys would have been.

Here we are a year later still needing a corner, but if we get one and Ward continues to ascend we will be in really good shape. I don’t think Veach handled the position badly as people make it sound. If we hit on one, then you got 3 good young corners on rookie contracts.

At the time, and in hindsight, I would’ve preffered Jessie Bates or Justin Reid, who were great as rookies.

But with the switch to a 4-3 I like the Speaks pick a lot more than I did when we made it. We now have a postion that is perfect for him as opposed to one that doesn’t make any ****ing sense. I firmly believe this was the intention when we made the pick and I’m cautiously optimistic that it looks a lot better in 2019.

We may have lucked out on Jackson. In college, he played WAY more zone than man. It remains to be seen if he can play man at a high level in the NFL and with Spags, man corners are going to be an absolute must.

I'm glad Spags is getting rid of just about all defensive assistants. We haven't really developed a ton of talent on the defensive side and I think the mistakes these players repeatedly make can be attributed some to the coaching.

I'm ready for fresh new ideas on that side.

I think people who found the Speaks pick totally baffling are stuck in hindsight. The Chiefs went into the draft having dealt with an injured Ford, an injured Houston and giving Frank ****ing Zombo snaps in critical games. Another pass rusher in the 2nd round was totally fine.

It was also sort of fine that he was a project, the Chiefs didn't expect Mahomes to blow the top off the league. They thought this was a learning year and they could do a 2 year rebuild of the defense, so a project was fine.

I really don't agree with the trade up though. The Chiefs could have found value in multiple areas, so I have no idea why they didn't just wait it out and improve the defense elsewhere if Speaks went before their pick.

The crazy one for me was Maurice Hurst. Why do you not take him in the 4th? He was a high first rounder with a question mark due to a heart issue, that's 100% worth a punt with your 4th rounder just in case you get a 1st round talent out of it.

In theory it's smart, but the vetting and execution need to get better.

Damn straight. Let the man implement HIS plan.( and hope that Britt Reid says "yes 'sir" more than "no 'sir"! :) )

lol you don’t let the guy who led the NFL in pressures and is still in his 20’s just walk. Tag and play, or tag and trade. No long term deal, and no letting him go for nothing.

Speaks isn't a pass rusher though. In college, he was largely a run-stuffing 4-3 DE that slid inside. To my knowledge, he had never really rushed the passer without his hand in the dirt before he joined the Chiefs.

Literally nobody is suggesting they should just let him hit free agency and do nothing.

Nearly everybody thinks they should tag him.

Everything I keep hearing from people who actually talk to people associated with the Chiefs basically imply that Tanoh and Speaks playing 3-4 OLB was dumb as ****. No wonder these guys haven’t looked good. They aren’t built to be in ****ing coverage, ever.

I think these guys have potential in a 4-3 as DE’s.

And for the “Speaks is too slow!” crowd...Michael Bennett and Derek Barnett ran slower times than him. Let’s see what he can do in a position to succeed instead of being set up to fail.

Exactly.

I think he might’ve saw my post in reply to yours and thought I was talking about 2019.

Speaks is going from a position that makes no sense to one that is perfect for him (SDE in a 4-3 Under)

If he surprised us at OLB at times, I fully expect him to surprise those that doubt him at his new position.

Britt Reid’s 2019 phrase chart:

“Yes Mr Spagnuolo”

“I’ll handle it right away Mr Spagnuolo”

“Couldn’t agree more Mr Spagnuolo”

“You’re absolutely right Mr. Spagnuolo”

He stinks as an LB and now we are going to the 4-3. Can't cover nor help stup the run. Cut him and let other dumbasses give him pile of money to **** up.