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Devil's advocate here.
I do like the idea of keeping Clark on a reduced deal (that he may or may not sign).
If we do, however. I think the #1 thing this defense needs is a Veach-style makeover at DL.
Veach did it in 2021 with the OL, and in 2022 he did it at WR and somehow at DB as well by drafting like a god.
In 2023, hopefully the DL is the project.
But.
If the team does extend Clark, then that's about it for the DE position minus, ostensibly a draft pick. You'd have Karlaftis/Clark/Danna plus whomever Veach snags in the draft.
That's not exactly a Veach-style makeover, is it. But I think we all understand that despite the yo-yo nature of Clark, his importance on the team is unmistakable. And while he's been a huge problem off the field with his legal problems, he has never once brought it into the locker room like Tyrann Mathieu did. He's a net-positive to have in the room, and of course he explodes in the postseason.
But would returning Clark and adding one draft pick make that much of a difference at DE? Even if the selection is a 1st round pick, like Andre Carter, that 1st round pick is almost never going to hit the ground running like Karlaftis did, who was ready-made for the NFL.
Veach has some moves he can still make to beef up the interior, especially replacing inconsistent guys like Nnadi and Saunders, but we've got our interior passrushers there wtih Jones and Wharton, who I assume we are tendering this offseason. The DTs Veach is likely to add will be 1-tech pluggers, not passrushers.
So that really only leaves 1 DE that Veach would realistically acquire to improve the four-man passrush, if he brings back Frank Clark.
Is that enough for you guys?
Keep in mind, that while the Chiefs did have the 2nd best passrush in the NFL, the blitz accounted for a third of that all year (although that was down to a quarter by the end of the season, as the switch flipped for Karlaftis). For the record, blitzing about 25% of the time seems to be the NFL average, but I am just gleaning that from non-subscription research online.
That's good enough to beat almost every team in the NFL. But the Chiefs are going to face Burrow in the playoffs every year, and while the Chiefs are likely to outpace the Bengals over the next couple of offseasons, if you want to put your foot on the Bengals throats, you juice up that passrush so that you rarely need to blitz. Once you do that, the Chiefs will have the Bengals number.
Just some musings. I just wonder that extending Frank Clark limits the ability of this team to juice up the passrush on the edge.
Arguing against myself, I think the logical counter-argument to that concern is that Clark is a force-multiplier so long as he stays out of trouble. If the Chiefs draft a passrusher in the 1st or 2nd rounds with a lot of promise, Clark's tutelage has been the golden formula to get them to develop (along with Joe Cullen). We've gotten more than we can ever bargain for out of Mike Danna, and Karlaftis is primed for a double-digit sack campaign in 2023.
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