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Originally Posted by SAUTO
Seems like from what you are saying they must've misjudged everywhere
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Or Sutton and his assistants did a poor job of teaching assignments and techniques.
I tend to lean towards that conclusion.
I don't think there's any question that Reid's loyalty to the man let him stay at least a season too long; the only question is was there consideration for a scheme switch a season before they implemented it?
I think it kind of looks like maybe so, yeah.
Did it ultimately cost us a SB? Maybe. Was there any way in hell that anyone on earth realistically could expect Mahomes to do what he did? Be what he is so quickly? NO.
I think any stable organization probably has something like a 3 year plan in place at all times. You'd have to, right? To try to balance salaries, the cap, the ageing of players, who you're going to need to groom replacements for and when you're probably going to move on.
Andy's comments about the future of defense being INSIDE pressure was telling I think mainly because historically speaking when he ran the Eagles organization, he spent money on corners and edge rushers, LT's, WR's and of course QB. That's an 'outside in' strategy. That's pretty typical NFL thought. It might be reading too much into an off-the-cuff comment, but Andy is very careful about what he says, so maybe not. Traditionally, your 3-4 defensive linemen are space eating run stuffers and your pass rush comes from your OLB'ers. So, I think that comment was interesting from a head coach who's team was running a 3-4 at the time.
Couple that with the draftees-most of which fit better in a 4-3, and that's why I think there might have been a plan to make a scheme change. I don't think they were 'wasted' I think they were seen as being situational fits for nickel and pass rush situations in their first year, and possibly getting more responsibility in their second year. I'm sure Houston's contract, Ford's running out, and Berry's contract were all part of the thought; if you're going to make a change, 2019 would be the first year you can either get out of these big contracts or restructure/re-sign depending on performance.
I think that Reid and Veach felt like upending both ends of the ship in a 'transition year' with a first time starting QB was inviting too much chaos; I think Andy wanted to concentrate on Mahomes and didn't want a distraction of feeling like he needed to be worrying about what the DC was doing. I think they thought the defense would be serviceable and Reid could be really hands on with his new QB. They even brought in an expensive new toy with Watkins to really make sure he had the best possible situation with weapons all around him.
They thought the defense would be serviceable. They thought Mahomes was going to be good, but nobody knew THIS GOOD, THIS FAST.
Then in 2019, the big contracts on defense would be in a place where they could make changes and one more draft probably gets the personnel changed over to switch to a 4-3.
It's not unreasonable, it's not stupid, it makes perfect sense; and nobody would be angry except that Mahomes was amazing and if the defense had been just a little better we're in the SB.
Before the season, nobody would have predicted that, and everyone would've taken a 12-4 season in which we made it to the AFC championship game with Mahomes winning MVP and been ecstatic.
We can just drop the whole thing because people have aligned into different camps on this and aren't interested in considering any other lines of thought. You either think:
a)no, they didn't have plan in place to change
b) they did and they're idiots for not doing it immediately or
c) considering the new QB and defensive contracts on the books it made sense to roll status quo on defense and let Reid worry about the first year QB.
So let's just move on.