[Sweet Daddy Hate]

Rep loads given.

I'm hearing "giving up the pass rush" and "letting go of best players" along with various sundry bitching regarding contract specifications mixed with a dash of hindsight 20/20 on when we could have picked up prospective free agents earlier that are now in the fold.

As to items #1 and #2, I say that we were forewarned by the man himself that the outside was no longer going to be the emphasis for the rush, and this was before Spags had even set foot in the building if I recall correctly. So getting bent out of shape over Dee Ford based on outside rushing specifically is a moot point. And that's me removing his injury issues from the table altogether.

As to Houston, though he was and is the more complete defender of the two, he is also a textbook case in exactly what the Chiefs need to be doing going forward with our "stars"; get the very best out of them and cut bait before they bleed you dry with injuries, cost, and lesser performance. Unfortunately, our cap situation was so shitty we didn't really have the ability or option of waiting the market out in an attempt to get compensation, nor could we continue to pay him at his contracted level any longer.
On the other side of that coin( and this applies to Ford as well ), it would have been a gamble to keep him with all that it entailed, and then hope that he would be able to make the transition to a 4-3 DE. As far as I'm concerned, you can just flip a coin in the air and make your call on Houston; what's done is done and we'll just have to wait and see how much money he can pull from the market and how productive he will be with his new team.

I'm not discussing Berry. Too much time has been spent there already and there are other threads available for that topic. Enough!

The contract work will have to get better but it looks like we're willing to do that and not get stomped on, but you can't view these deals in a vacuum either. Throughout this process, I've seen far too much singular finger-pointing at Veach as if he were operating in some undisclosed, secret bunker where he and only he was making the decisions in regards to who we were going to pursue, who we were going to release, and how much we were going to pay for services and for what length of time. Though he is the representative of the franchise for contract negotiations, he isn't the only man involved in the process. The Chiefs don't just turn over the keys to the house and say, "we're going on vacation buddy, do the best you can while we're out"!
I have faith in Veach until I don't. And if he kills it at the draft, then I won't lament the passing of Dorsey or any other GM that the Chiefs have seen fit to hire.