Veach is the best GM in the NFL
 

I don’t think it’s even debatable at this point

It's damn hard to argue otherwise right now.

Golden Age of the Chiefs Kingdom is upon us. He is the reason for it all (via Andy).

I'd lean Ballard, but the Rivers deal remains a really strange one.

The organization writ large is the best in the NFL and that's enough for me.

Not sure how anyone could argue this.

its hard to argue that he is not.

speaking of hard...........

MY ****ING DICK IS ROCK HARD

Remember when we thought he was hired so nobody would challenge Reid's authority

Whoever is the last to bring home a Lombardi will be considered the best. As of right now, Veach is the best....until he isnt lol.

I think it was O.City that said we have the best coach this franchise has likely ever had or will have. And he's not wrong (top 5 of all time).

In a sport where the 2 most important things to have are a HC and a QB, we have the two best in the history of the franchise and guys who will almost certainly be among the best 5 of all time (with a legit shot at top 3 for both).

Definitely the salad days for the organization.

Gotta make hay while the sun is shining - the next decade is the best we'll ever see for Chiefs football.

I can’t wait until we win two more Super Bowls and the rest of the West has to look up to us....then 3 more for the Patriots and Steelers.

Agreed and in

I'd say a large part of this is Mahomes willingness to give the team a deal that allows the team flexibility.... But Veach is the one who masterminded the Mahomes acquisition in the first place so he gets the credit here too.

We had $170 in cap space 4 months ago. Since then we have:

-kept Sammy
-signed Breeland
-gave Mahomes half a billy
-extended Chris Jones

It’s so beautiful LMAO

What's also exciting is that he's the second youngest GM in football, so he should be here for a long time.

<blockquote class="twitter-tweet"><p lang="en" dir="ltr">Only major Free Agent <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/Chiefs?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#Chiefs</a> lost from Super Bowl Winner was Nickel Back Kendall Fuller. <br><br>Others Departed..<br>LeSean McCoy<br>Blake Bell<br>Cameron Erving <br>Stefen Wisniewski <br>Jordan Lucas <br><br>Still FAs<br>Terrell Suggs<br>Xavier Williams <br>Mo Claiborne<br>Colquitt<br><br>Might be better in 2020.</p>&mdash; Chad Forbes (@NFLDraftBites) <a href="https://twitter.com/NFLDraftBites/status/1283097644706009089?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">July 14, 2020</a></blockquote> <script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>

Can’t wait till he drafts Mahomes replacement in 15+ years when everybody thinks we’re done

:)

Even the guys I thought he grossly overpaid for turned out to be pretty damn good when the lights were brightest.

The Patriots have convinced the league that you either have to get rid of good players and be ruthless to win Super Bowls, or have lightning strike in a bottle and have all of your best players on rookie deals and fill it out with veterans who still have stuff left in the tank.

Instead of a Machiavellian Hitler running things, you have a wonderful, friendly head coach who seeks to teach, not crack the whip. Players have room to be themselves. Second chances are freely given, both on and off the field.

Instead of putting a premium and people KNOWING you're secretive, you just do it without bugging your own employees' offices. Veach's moves tend to come out of NOWWHERE. The Patriots hold their cards close to their chests, but they also TELL everybody that they can't see anything and make it known.

Instead of telling their great young players to go **** themselves, the Chiefs try to keep them. The Patriots kill individuality and development if you're not playing on a dirt cheap contract. The Chiefs try to create legacies. The Patriots constantly change their team-building philosophy every couple of years, and old guard players who previously fit them just have to get the hell out. The Chiefs are aware of NFL trends, but rather than re-inventing the wheel, the Chiefs work THROUGH their great players while also having longterm vision.

What a wonderful, bright, and positive team we have!

Poor bastard did one of the best rebuilding jobs in history and then his transcendent QB retires because of the sins of his predecessor.

Yeah. The only thing that can blemish him at this point is if the wheels fall off someone ala Eric Berry.

Veach has done beautifully.

Hopefully we can keep the weevils and aphids out and get some hay. I don’t want to end up like Indy wasting a bunch of years of transcendent QB and got 1 win.

Dude needs his contract restructured.

You have never been more correct, sir. He's amazing. I love the way he's always operated.

Veach just OWNED a second straight offseason...

<blockquote class="twitter-tweet"><p lang="en" dir="ltr">The <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/Chiefs?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#Chiefs</a> entered the offseason with the futures of key pieces Sammy Watkins, Bashaud Breeland, Demarcus Robinson, Mike Pennel and Chris Jones as question marks. Patrick Mahomes’ massive deal needed to be done.<br><br>Every single one was signed or extended. Remarkable job.</p>&mdash; Pete Sweeney (@pgsween) <a href="https://twitter.com/pgsween/status/1283105692891721730?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">July 14, 2020</a></blockquote> <script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>

I literally was coming here to start a thread with the exact same title.

And you're right, it's not even debatable at this point.

From the stench of the Pioli era to the ego of the Dorsey era to this.

We are so blessed.

This is the beginning of the golden age of Chiefs football.

One more ring and he's in the HOF.

Used the exact same "golden age" phrase before I read your post. It truly is. The only person who can stop us at this point is Fauci.

Now imagine if Speaks has a little bit of a breakout season...

And he seems really nice too!!

Ballard has been great for them, but he's also been quite conservative and tight with the money.

It's probably the responsible and best approach, sure, but I can't help but think that some of those years could have ended differently for them if he had just been a little more aggressive in free agency.

It's one thing to not make any sudden moves when you're not sure about the health of your QB, but it's another to be among the top handful of teams in available cap space year after year after year.

That o.city knows his shit. for Sure.

Such a difference from the King Carl-era when prolonged holdouts/pissing matches with players and their agents became standard operating procedure.

With advances in medicine Mahomes will play until he's 61.

He needs to have kids already so Mahomes Jr can take over

Already thought of that...

Stop it.

This is exactly why I give Veach the edge here.

Can Veach get to work on the coronavirus vaccine so we can move past that?

Veach was the best GM in the NFL last year when he took a shoestring budget and in mid-damn-season turned our defense from worst to arguably top 5. This is just icing on the cake.

It's a perfect situation. Brilliant GM, team players, and a coach so damn good at this that his players will make sacrifices to stay on this team.

I think he got caught in between.

Early on in his tenure there, they had a ton of cap space but hadn't built a foundation around Luck. Then Ballard steps in and gets that foundation built damn near overnight....and Luck walks away.

He was tip-toeing forward last season w/ stuff like the Houston deal and then got more aggressive this season w/ a move like Buckner. But I think if he had Luck still you'd have seen a similar off-season in 2020 to what Veach did in 2019.

Where I give a slight edge to Ballard is that I think he's the best pure eye for talent around right now. I look at that 2018 draft and am just in awe of the thing. And I think Turay is just scratching the surface and could be a force this year if he has recovered from his injury against us.

DeCosta is another guy who deserves a nod here, but the track record is still too short. He ran that scouting department before he took over last year as GM in Baltimore and I think he's been the driving force behind their success for about a decade now. We'll see if he can continue that run with all the additional administrative burdens, but he's a damn good front office guy.

He hasn't been GM long enough to make that claim but he is off to a hell of a start

Imagine Carl trying to get this done back in the day... He would have run off everyone.. and traded Mahomes for some draft picks and a brokedick 49er.:D

Do you apply this same dumb logic to Mahomes?

Nice.

So Correct.
Veach is a stud GM

Different circumstances, too, though.

Veach has had QB stability, Ballard had an unprecedented lost season with Luck in 2017 and a surprise retirement before the season started.

Veach was developed through the organization, culture, and coach that he took over for, while Ballard has had to forge his own path while taking over for a team with a QB and absolute dogshit at the other positions. He also had to hire a new head coach and navigate the team through that Josh McDaniels ****ery.

Veach is employed by a stable owner with a smoking hot daughter. Ballard is employed by a 60-year alcoholic and drug addict.

It's all well and good that Ballard has assembled young talent AND saved cap space in three years, and yes, circumstances are clearly different from one another, but if the roles were reversed and Veach got the Colts job and Ballard got the Chiefs job back when each guy was hired, would Ballard be aggressive like Veach? Would we have all the WR weapons we do on offense for Mahomes, or would we look more balanced? Would we be spending that cap space and going for all the marbles with aggressive moves? Would we have a Super Bowl right now? Likewise, we can assume Veach's aggression in KC would lead to misfires in Indy and when combined with the instability of the franchise would lead to some pretty bad seasons, but would Veach actually take that approach if he were in charge of the Colts?

What has impressed me most about veach is cap management. The tyreek and mahomes contracts were masterpieces. Not to mention his brilliant idea to tie players up to a ton of short term overpaid contracts with limited guarantees. It helped us really load up on a super bowl run without crushing us with long term dead money.

Without question. Best GM gets us the best players/team.

GTFOOH

Don't forget Veach found Mahomes to begin with.

Now lets be fair - Veach has just had to start spinning plates here.

He's had an MVP quarterback for damn near free over the last 2 seasons. That's a crutch that has allowed him to do the things he's done with Watkins and has allowed him the missfire on Hitchens. It's allowed him to get in a straight up bidding war with the Texans and just keep going until Mathieu signed.

Moreover, he's still in the 'lean' years of Clark's deal and even Jones/Mahomes.

From a cap standpoint, he's actually had a pretty easy go of it. He's had some guys here that are willing to play for less (Schwartz, Kelce) because they love the organization. And he had a weird situation with Hill that allowed him to get a significant discount there as well.

I think there's a good basis to say that in the future he'll demonstrate strong cap management skills, but I have a hard time saying at this point that he HAS. He's been a fortunate benefactor of having a head coach that people love playing for and simultaneously hasn't been forced to make any truly difficult 'cap casualty' decisions. Those decisions will come soon enough.

That's when we'll see just how good a cap manager he is. To date we've seen a GM that can/will be aggressive in utilizing his cap when he has a free MVP on his roster who affords him that ability. We'll see if he can still maintain that level of excellence when he has to tighten the belt a bit in the coming years.

In a sense yes. Should Mahomes be in HOF or considered the GOAT? I don't think many GMs around the NFL or NFL fans would consider Veach best GM in the NFL other than - homer Chief fans

So to make a long story short, your question is essentially "Would the Colts be better off and would the Chiefs be worse off had Ballard been promoted here and Veach gone to Indy?"

I don't think I'm willing to say that, no. I do think you're right in the sense that each team would be different, but I don't think the Chiefs specifically would be worse.

I think they may be a little less flashy - you'd probably see that Watkins money go to someone like Kyle Fuller. Maybe that Hardman pick is used on someone a little less boom/bust like McLaurin. Hard to say that the Clark deal doesn't happen when Ballard just made a very similar deal w/ Buckner.

I mean look - you don't pass on a bird in the hand here so I get it. It's hard to say we'd be better with anyone but Veach. But I also think Veach, as you alluded to, has been put in arguably the best organizational situation in all of pro sports. Ballard...hasn't.

If I'm doing a 'GM Draft' where every front office is detonated and their members scattered to the wind...I think I take Ballard and maybe DeCosta ahead of Veach. I don't think that's some damning indictment of Veach by any means and I don't object to anyone that would take Veach either. But I don't look at what he's done here as anything that those guys couldn't/wouldn't have done.

Started rough but the conventional wisdom is you couldn't get away with top dollar contracts going to two WRs, a TE, a multi-role NT/DT and forge a record breaking deal for an almost indisputable #1 QB and Veach has managed to do that for a few seasons going forward.

Mahomes is good enough to gloss over many holes on the roster so it's not a big concern, but I'm going to hold on to GOAT praise on Veach unless its clear a) the team gets routine on-field production from the front half of their draft picks every year or b) they find figurative diamonds in the rough from the lower rounds/UDFAs that become legit stars every so often.

Welcome change to see we're the ones being proactive and getting our cornerstone players locked while the rest of the NFL sits with their thunbs up their asses.

Excellent post!

The draft separates the good from the great.

Hill, Kelce, Jones, Schwartz and yes even Fisher are key players here who he inherited. And Hill, Kelce and Schwartz are going to get HoF consideration when all is said and done. We sure are quick to gloss over that.

The bar from his predecessor in that regard is pretty damn high. If this team isn't going to atrophy on his watch, it's going to be because he was able to bring in guys like say George Kittle in the 3rd round. And maybe he's done something like that with Hardman - a big time 'heat check' pick when easier bets like McLaurin were on the board. That may be a serious home-run for him before all is said and done.

Grabbing Thornhill instead of 'safe' pick at a position of need like Winovich and then piece-mealing the LDE spot together a bit was a risky gamble that worked out great (though the Thornhill pick specifically was almost universally lauded).

He clearly prefers swinging for the fences in the draft so if enough of those land, he'll continue to cycle in great players. But THAT'S the bar - great players. Because he inherited a few of those guys upon taking over and in the next handful of years, he'll need to replace 'em.

Will he do that? Time will tell. Hard to write that book just yet.

Yeah it was a good post and although I don't like him DJ did a great job there.

I like Veach but man he came into one hell of a great situation that most GMs in the NFL could only dream about. It's hard to compare him to say a GM taking over for Cardinals or Dolphins or some shit team like that.

So far though I like what Veach has done here.

Sure, but he hasn't had an easy go. He knew we had a short window with a cheap mahomes. He was loading up a super bowl winner to exploit that cap savings, while overhauling a defense, while still making sure he had long term gigantic available cap to keep both mahomes and Chris jones. And he pulled it off brilliantly. We built a good enough team to win a super bowl, we get to keep that team intact for a few years, and we're not even bleeding from the cap yet. That's remarkable.

None of that was by accident. Veach brilliantly frontloaded a ton of contracts to give us cap flexibility for mahomes to backload his. He brilliantly locked us into a TON of 2-3 year deals so we can stockpile talent while buying us time to draft our future. Sure, who knows how we'll look a few years from now. But veach set us up perfectly to be really damn good for at least the next 3 or 4 years. He was planning for the spinning plates years ago. That's why our plates are spinning, not smashing on the ground.

That’s been our strategy ever since Andy got here. Kelce, Mahomes, Jones, Tyreek, Hardman, Thornhill. Basically all these Guys are boom or bust. And sure Peters and Hunt were 2 gambles that failed, but they were hits and provided excellent value while they were here.

Coaching and environment matter so much in the league. With our coaching staff, I don’t think there’s any issue with boom or bust players.

Overhauling is an understatement. That defense was ****ing abysmal.

Veach helped bring us Mahomes and our first SB win in 50 years- yet some on here want to give the edge to a ****ing Colts GM who way over-paid on Buckner and brought in Old Man Rivers. **** the Colts and anyone in their entire organization.

Please turn in your Chiefs fan card and move to Indy- thanks!

He's done a great job in keeping this SB team together in the short term, but the real tell here (and what will be determinative for dynasty purposes) will be what Veach does 3-4 years down the road when a lot of Mahomes' current teammates will be gone and/or nearing their expiration dates.

Mahomes is a shit ton better than Brady ever was, so Veach will probably have to do less than Belichick did, but he'll still need talent around him to win SBs over the next 10+ years.

I agree. Veach has done well with talent. Great? We'll see. I understand your point there. But in terms of cap management... Brilliant. In terms of finding tons of cheap talent? Brilliant. Combine that with a generational qb and the bar for finding great talent everywhere is a lot lower.

Also can't be understated how outstanding our nobodies played....

Charvarius ward
Breeland
Damien Williams
Wisnewski
Rankin (before the injury)
Pennel
Matt Moore

He might as well have picked these guys up from goodwill.

He didn't really frontload. Moreover, the 'concept' of frontloading a contract to make space at a later date is an outdated concept in the rollover era in the NFL.

I wouldn't say he locked into a 'ton' of 2-3 year deals either. Watkins and Mathieu clearly fit into this category, but Watkins is EXACTLY the kind of 'easy' contract he could do because of Mahomes cheap deal. He wildly overpaid for Watkins and nobody can argue otherwise. He paid Watkins as a #1 wideout to go be a #2. That's no sort of clever cap management - it's have money, will spend.

And again, that's potentially laudable given the window he was in, but it doesn't speak to any real long-term genius when it comes to managing the cap. It's just overspending on a luxury item because he could. Okay.

And for the middle of the roster guys like Wilson - well that's just what players of that caliber get. The league's not giving out long-term deals to mid-level players.

Regarding Jones - what was 'brilliant' about it? His cap figure this season is going to be roughly the tag. He signed a contract a tick beyond the market Buckner set. What Veach did was fine - but it was market. It was nothing earth shattering. As for Mahomes - kid wanted to stay here and lets be honest, I'm going to guess many of those negotiations were done w/ Clark Hunt and whoever the team cap specialist is.

Name a GM that entered his job with a better foundation than Veach. With a better roster and organization that was set up for long-term success. Yes, relatively speaking, his gig has been easy. I don't see why it's hard for some to acknowledge that fact.

Veach has succeeded. He's done a good job. That's all without argument at this point because flags fly forever. But this is one of those instances where people are trying to place a higher degree of difficulty on what he's done than is warranted. NOBODY in the league has had a smoother path forward than him. Nobody. Has he fumbled it? Nah, though you could say that maybe a better LB signing instead of Hitchens and Fuller instead of Watkins yields us a title in 2018 as well - but the '19 SB erases those sins.

I'm just not going to pretend like Veach came in here and overhauled some woebegone franchise and performed miracles. This team was set up for greatness when he took it over. He made some very good moves to put it over the top but I don't think he's doing anything exceptionally difficult in that regard.

Very good point there. He absolutely deserves major marks for Ward.

If you're gonna give him credit for Breeland though, let's not forget that he passed on him in '18 when he was a street free agent and we were again a single stop away from an AFC championship. Could Breeland have helped there?

Williams is fine; fungible. System back who belongs on Andy's ledger. Again, I think you're overlooking the relativity aspect of this whole thing. Under Dorsey's tenure we were slapping him on the back for those same sorts of in-season additions that work out well. Why? Because Pioli never did 'em.

Well that's because Pioli was a pile of warmed over dogshit. My point is that MOST teams have a number of nice in-season pickups like that. The Chiefs aren't a lot different in that regard apart from the fact that their coach is a goddamn wizard who can hide someone like Reiter.

I'm simply trying to point out that in some instances we're giving him credit for things that all good GMs do and saying that makes him clearly the best. No - there are many good GMs in this league that do things like that.

Now a move like getting a top flight CB for a guard you were going to cut? Well that's unique. I think Ward is a genuine top 25 CB in this league and for some weird reason I completely air-mailed that one. Veach deserves enormous credit for that pickup and THOSE are the things that I think can distinguish him from a fairly select group of very good GMs going forward.

But using cap space made possible from a cheap QB to sign Sammy Watkins and Anthony Hitches? C'mon. He's not infallible and it's okay to point that out.

https://media1.giphy.com/media/Uu6rspeIh5F3W/source.gif

Your ability to be completely ass-backwards wrong about such a wide variety of topics is very impressive. You're truly a jackass of all trades.

*climbs up on top of the roof*

"HE'S ONLY 41 YEARS OLD!"

He wasn't frontloading contracts for a later date. He was loading this team up with short term deals we can easily get out of. Tempting for him to sign blue chip superstars. We've seen lots of teams load up on a short super bowl window by stockpiling talent for a few years only to see the cap explode in a few years once the dead money hits. The Chiefs aren't at risk of that. Because outside of the big 3 they barely have enough guaranteed money a few years out. You may consider guys like Watkins as luxury contracts and overpaid. I call them stopgap deals.

Veach loaded our team with a super bowl roster while giving us flexibility to keep mahomes and jones. He gave us a new 4 year window without saddling us with dead money deals. That is something they couldn't do around QBs like Russell Wilson. And at the end of the 4 years, he STILL managed to build flexibility into the mahomes deal to build a team around him. Flexibility guys like Aaron Rodgers didn't have. We have to get a lot of things right but the table is set.

On the jones deal... The deal itself wasn't brilliant. But I don't think it's a coincidence that jones got a 4 year deal while mahomes took a 4 year discount. Jones is a chief because of the brilliance of the mahomes contract.

As said before, the same argument has been had regarding Mahomes.

We 'easily got out of' Watkins by overpaying him for another season. We 'easily got out of' Hitchens by extending him to a deal it will still hurt to walk away from.

The point is that we've been able to 'easily get out of' some of those deals by absorbing fairly substantial dead cap hits or extending guys to deals that we simply won't be able to do with any frequency going forward.

And that's part of what's made the degree of difficulty lesser for him. While his competition in the division is dragging along $20+ million mediocrity in Rivers and Carr, he's got the biggest swinging dick on the planet at 1/4 of that AND a few HoF caliber talents that were on the roster he took over who are were also below market due to pre-existing contracts or circumstances not of Veach's making.

This job hasn't been a difficult one. Now that's not to take away from the job he's done - but he has had it far easier than most.

Oh, and not only did he change our defense overnight without saddling our cap. He did this while eating a shitload of dead money by outright getting rid of Houston, berry, and Ford contracts. Veach could have committed career suicide by throwing $20m in dead money at these guys. If veach didn't win a super bowl in 2 years, can you imagine how many chiefs fans would have destroyed him for wasting our window? That was a ballsy move. Not only did he make it work, taking their contracts off the books was huge in allowing us to sign mahomes and Jones.

That's literally what this contract allows for. Which loops back to left nut's position on drafting as the true deciding factor.

He inherited a great offense. But that was a legit defense in the playoffs and he built it under extraordinary circumstances. And as good as our offense was we needed that defense big time in the playoffs. That wasn't generational talents like mahomes or Reid. It was barely Dorsey. Veach gets to own that one.

Was it?

I mean Houston and Berry were absolute no-brainers. And few had a problem with moving on from Ford (most were upset only with the return).

Again, we're circling back to the 'giving him credit for pretty routine stuff' complaint I have here.

NOBODY thought Houston at $20 million was a good decision. And the moment Berry elected not to get the surgery and the Chiefs had an open path to getting around his injury guarantees, everyone saw that as an open and shut case.

Now the combination of the Ford and Clark deals it TOTAL - that's a ballsy move. Look at it from that perspective and you're right. That's an incredibly aggressive decision from Veach and in the end, we won a SB so he deserves that credit. Being willing to essentially move Ford and a 1st rounder for Clark and then paying a premium for Clark over Ford....that's putting his dick on the table a bit.

I'm not saying give him no credit. I'm saying give him an appropriate amount and I think in some ways we're overdoing it. The hard part is yet to come. We're staring straight down the barrel of 'the disease of more' as Parcells put it. That's gonna be the true trial by fire for our boy.

How did he not 'saddle our cap'?

Clark, Mathieu and Hitchens are hauling around MASSIVE deals. Deals made possible by a cheap QB contract and a generational WR who had to take an ass-kicking in contract negotiations because he was stuck in a legal mess. Not to mention about $8 million in under-market surplus on his Left and Right tackles who were already here when he got here.

He hasn't put us in cap hell, no, but he paid the 2 marquis additions he brought in contracts that were at/near record levels. What's the 'finesse' in that? Where's the 'genius'? Especially when one of them also cost a hell of a lot of draft capital.

**** YEAH!!!!