A few things to clear up.

[Direckshun]

The Chiefs are a really, really good team with a few weaknesses, and a non-elite quarterback.

I have no idea why that's such a hard notion to grasp.

We have some folks (not on ChiefsPlanet) who are committed to the idea that the Chiefs are a couple pieces away from Super Bowl contention. That's a really difficult idea to swallow, because unless the Alex Smith of the Colts playoffs game emerges, this team doesn't have the quarterback to win the Super Bowl.

We have other folks (approximately 75% of ChiefsPlanet) who are similarly committed to the idea that the entire team is ass, an opinion fueled by hatred of Alex Smith's limitations more than it is by fact.

This Chiefs team has a couple holes, right? At WR and ILB and OL and so on.

With the exception of MAYBE two teams in the NFL, MAYBE, so does every other team in the NFL. In a parity driven league, you simply can't plug all holes unless your GM is simply better than everybody else (Schneider in Seattle, Belichek in New England). And even that is difficult to swallow -- Ozzie Newsome and Ted Thompson are the two of the top five GMs in the NFL and Baltimore and Green Bay have at LEAST as many roster holes as the Chiefs do. (Green Bay is riddled with them.) They've just been able to win Super Bowls by overcoming those holes, not by plugging all of them.

That said, the Chiefs have a Top 10 defense that is returning in its entirety in 2015. DJ and DeVito will be back, Ford and Gaines will have had another year, and Clark Hunt has personally said the Chiefs want Houston to be a Chief for his whole career. The entire secondary, the #2 secondary in the NFL last year, will be back. The entire passrush, a Top 5 passrush in the NFL, will be back. All our Pro Bowlers will be back. Plus we have 10 draft picks.

The Chiefs have serious holes, still, on the OL and WR corps, and hopefully address it in the draft. Travis Kelce was a de facto rookie last year. De'Anthony Thomas was a rookie last year. Albert Wilson was a rookie that only played for a month. Fulton and Fisher were rookies at their position last year. We benched one of our best-ish lineman in Stephenson and lost Allen to injury. Both will return. Our #1 WR right now actually fits the offense. PLUS WE HAVE 10 DRAFT PICKS.

Alex Smith is a weight on this team so long as he plays like Regular Season Alex Smith. The team can succeed with that Alex Smith, however, because they went 9-7 last year against the league's toughest schedule. This year, the ONLY THING the Chiefs have lost is Rodney Hudson. Everywhere else, we're better. And our schedule will be easier.

Plus... we have 10 draft picks. Four of them in the top 100.

So count me amongst the realists. I'm not printing Super Bowl tickets nor am I a fatalist fueled by the Smith-hate.

I will say, if somehow, the Alex Smith that has balled out of his mind in all three playoff games he's played somehow emerges and manages to stick around, I could be seriously swayed towards believing that Anything Is Possible in 2015.

I just doubt it. But that probably means the Chiefs are still "merely" going to be a very dangerous, talented team in 2015.

[L.A. Chieffan]

Alex Smith is a Superbowl QB. Issue solved.

[Sweet Daddy Hate]

Originally Posted by L.A. Chieffan

Alex Smith is a Superbowl QB. Issue solved.

So was Rex Grossman.

[splatbass]

Originally Posted by Sweet Daddy Williams

So was Rex Grossman.

Did they forfeit the trophy and rings because they won with Rex Grossman?

Didn't think so. A win is a win.

[Baby Lee]

Originally Posted by splatbass

Did they forfeit the trophy and rings because they won with Rex Grossman?

Didn't think so. A win is a win.

Unless you're referring to the NFC trophy and rings, . . . The Bears lost the SB.

[splatbass]

Originally Posted by Baby Lee

Unless you're referring to the NFC trophy and rings, . . . The Bears lost the SB.

That's what I'm referring to. People say we can't get to the SB with Smith but he is better than Grossman.

[Jim Lahey]

We've shown we can beat some of the top teams in the league. This team is still one of the youngest in the league. Yeah we have a chickenshit QB but we have to deal with it. If we add another guy opposite Maclin in the draft and Allen or Stephenson step up at RT, our line should be good enough to get by.

Our defense balled out last season for losing DJ, and Devito. We had no namers at ILB and corner and still had a top 10 D. Obviously another ILB and safety in the first 4 rounds would be great.

Bottom line is, with our coaching staff, if Dorsey is able to hit on this draft..as in at least 3-4 guys who are either starting or rotating at key positions there's no reason why we don't make a run this year unless we get the injury bug.

[BigCatDaddy]

Originally Posted by splatbass

That's what I'm referring to. People say we can't get to the SB with Smith but he is better than Grossman.

So was Cassell. Should have kept him around.

[Eleazar]

Originally Posted by Direckshun

http://bleacherreport.com/articles/2...rterbacks-gone

Where Have All the Quarterbacks Gone?
By Ty Schalter , NFL National Lead Writer
Mar 26, 2015

The NFL has never been hungrier for good quarterbacks.

While the few lucky teams with quality signal-callers make deep playoff runs again and again, the desperate rest of the lot aren't just scraping the bottom of the barrel; they're licking dirty plates and rifling through dumpsters.

The grand old generation of today's top quarterbacks (Peyton Manning, Tom Brady, Drew Brees, Philip Rivers, Ben Roethlisberger, Tony Romo, et al.) are nearing the end of their careers, adding teams whose offensive tables are set to the lengthening bread lines.

The 2014 free-agent crop was a quarterbacking Dust Bowl. There was a minor bidding war for Josh McCown, a career 76.1 passer who'll be celebrating his 36th birthday in July. The Cleveland Browns were the "winners" of that one, snagging the replacement-level veteran to a three-year, $14 million contract with $6.3 million guaranteed, per Spotrac.

This draft class is the thinnest quarterback crop since...well, the last one. There are only two blue-chip prospects—the one some scouts were calling "radioactive" last season, per Mike Florio of NBC Sports via Yahoo, and another whose college system makes him hard to project, as explained by Bleacher Report's Matt Bowen.

How come there are so few haves and so many have-nots? Why is the quarterback talent pool drying up? Is it the players, the way they're being scouted or how they're being used?

The Great Flattening

Passing has slowly reshaped the NFL since a set of late 1970s rules changes. Using Pro-Football-Reference.com data, we can calculate league-wide per-game passing averages for each of the last seven five-year periods:

NFL League-wide Passing Efficiency Rates, 1980-2014 Year Att Cmp% Rate Yds
1980-1984 31.44 56.1 71.74 202.06
1984-1988 32.02 55.02 71.74 205.1
1989-1993 31.4 57.36 74.68 199.14
1994-1998 33.4 57.14 75.76 209.46
1999-2003 32.68 59.08 77.78 207.16
2004-2009 32.62 60.48 80.06 210.48
2010-2014 34.54 61.12 83.94 231

Inexorable progress toward passing perfection!

Nearly every single period features more pass attempts, which are completed more frequently, more efficiently and for more total yards than the one before. Since 1980, the average NFL game features over 40 more passing yards for each team and nearly 16 rating points of passer efficiency.

The NFL passer efficiency metric itself reveals how priorities have changed. It was introduced in 1973, during the days of grip-it-and-rip-it guys such as Terry Bradshaw and Ken Stabler, and madcap scramblers such as Fran Tarkenton and Archie Manning.

The formula indexes completion, touchdown and interception rate, as well as average yards per attempt, to league averages from 1960-1970. This metric has been remarkably good at identifying the league's best passers. Coaches and personnel departments have spent decades using it as a benchmark and adapting both their offenses and players to maximize it.

It's no wonder today's quarterbacks rate massively better:



The league-wide improvement in quarterback play has been astonishing. The highest-rated passer of 1979, Roger Staubach, would have finished 14th in 2014. The lowest-rated qualifying passer of 2014, Blake Bortles, would have finished 18th in 1979.

The biggest effect hasn't been on the top couple of passers or the bottom few, though, but the great mass in the middle. Only five quarterbacks hit 80.0 or higher in 1979; a whopping 27 of 33 qualifying quarterbacks did at least that well in 2014. Only five quarterbacks cracked 90.0 in 1999; in this past season, 16 passers topped that mark.

Jay Cutler, the Chicago Bears quarterback whose miserable 2014 season cost both his head coach and general manager their jobs, would have been the fifth-highest-rated passer of 1999.

Efficient, but Effective?

For a moment, though, let's set the composite rating aside and break out these rate stats individually: Touchdown rate, interception rate, average yards per attempt and average yards per completion. How does all this hyper-efficient quarterback play translate into on-field success?



For all that surgical precision, passing is only a little more effective.

Since the rules opened the passing game, offensive architects responded to incredible pressure to reduce interceptions. Over the last 30 years, they've continually adapted their schemes to give quarterbacks safer options. The results have been spectacular: The league-wide interception rate dropped from 4.6 percent in 1980 to just 2.5 percent in 2014.

That risk aversion, though, comes at a price.

Touchdown rate dropped precipitously from the first half of the 1980s to the second, and again from the second half of the 1980s to the early 1990s. Picks were down by 20.2 percent from the first period to the third, but touchdowns fell 9.4 percent.

As teams passed up the risky deep throw for the safety of the slant, the length of the average NFL completion shortened by two feet (0.68 yards) in 10 years. The average yards gained per attempt fell from 7.06 to 6.86, despite the higher completion rate.

From the early 1990s on, while interceptions kept falling, touchdowns and yards per attempt stayed flat for a decade. In the early 2000s, they started creeping back up again. A dramatic bump in touchdown rate (from 4.04 percent to 4.36 percent) in the last five seasons means we're finally seeing passing scores as often as we did during Reagan's first term.

How were NFL coordinators able to make things so easy for their quarterbacks? The widespread introduction of slot receivers helped, as did the introduction of pass-catching running backs, athletic offensive tackles and deep-threat tight ends. Increasingly widespread, multiple formations and pre-snap motion allow teams to hide core concepts under many layers of window dressing.

More than anything else, though, offense has changed because of the shotgun snap.

Under the Gun

Thanks to the Football Outsiders' Premium DVOA Database, we can track shotgun usage for the final year of each of our first six five-year periods (the database only goes back to 1989). In just over two decades, shotgun has gone from a sparsely-used gimmick to the foundation of NFL offense:



In 1989, just a handful of teams used shotgun more than 10 percent of the time. The Seattle Seahawks used it most often, lining up in the 'gun on 24.3 percent of snaps.

In 2014, just a handful of teams used shotgun in fewer than half their snaps. Only one squad (Baltimore Ravens, 23.8 percent) had a shotgun utilization rate below 40 percent. Today's quarterbacks are playing with a much better view of the field, and they have more time to find an open man and increased awareness of the pass rush.

It's indisputable: The multiple-target, quick-decision, shotgun-based offenses of today have flattened the curve, making even the worst starting quarterbacks pretty darn good, and mediocre quarterbacks excellent.

That's why teams are so desperate to get an edge: In a league where all quarterbacks are good, only great ones make a difference.

If Everyone's Super, No One Is

Going back to the first chart, you'll notice something: Average yards-per-completion never went back up. Today, the average NFL completion is a full yard shorter than when Dave Mustaine was still in Metallica.

Go back to the passer efficiency rating chart, and you'll notice something else: 2014's quarterbacks have a massive lead on the rest of history from the 10-slot on down—but from No. 3 to No. 10, the 2009 group and some of the 2004 group, supercede this past year's performers. The second tier of really good quarterbacks has been flattened into the third and fourth tiers of decent ones.

In today's NFL, only the Aaron Rodgerses and Andrew Lucks of the world can combine old-school big-throw aggression with modern, intricate precision—and they're incredibly rare.

That insatiable hunger for stud quarterbacks has revolutionized the way quarterbacks are drafted, and not for the better:



NFL teams have consistently drafted more quarterbacks over the years. This chart goes back to our seven five-year periods, but it breaks the signal-callers into tiers based on the current draft format: first-rounders, second- and third-rounders, fourth- through seventh-rounders.

The legendary class of 1983 inflated the first-round crop of our first period, but we see teams generally held steady drafting quarterbacks at the top of the class while taking late-round fliers at an almost exponential rate. Teams were reaching in the later rounds, trying to find that diamond in the rough.

In the last 10 years, the total number of quarterbacks drafted has fallen back a little from that 2000-2004 high, but more of them are first- and second-day guys. Instead of taking a lot of fliers, teams are reaching for quarterbacks with precious top picks.

Into the Fire

Once acquired, teams test their over-drafted quarterbacks early and often:



Here's how many starts rookie quarterbacks have accounted for periods, taking into account the number of teams in the league and games played in those five seasons.

The 1987 strike affected the 1985-89 period; that spring, teams went gonzo for late-round and undrafted quarterbacks. Many of those "rookies" were replacement players who never saw the field again; they were excluded (as best possible) from this data, but the stockpiling still shows up here.

The '87 bump aside, we see two very obvious trends: rookies accounting for more and more starts throughout the years and a bigger fraction of them being first-round picks.

Over the last five years, first-rounders alone got more starts than all rookies combined in 1980-84, 1990-94 and very nearly 1995-99.

There are some less obvious trends, too: Second- and third-round rookie quarterbacks are getting twice as many starts now as ever before, as teams throw less talented (or less ready) quarterbacks into the deep end hoping they'll sink or swim.

Third-day and undrafted quarterbacks are paying the price. Historically, they've always been long shots to start as rookies, but these days, there's almost zero chance of that happening. The high-pick guys with the multiyear deals are going to get every chance to succeed.

Well, maybe not every chance.

What happens to the EJ Manuels and the Geno Smiths of the world, the over-drafted quarterbacks who start too early, too often?

Let's look at how many starts quarterbacks drafted in each of our seven periods get over their first four years:



The graph is practically inverted. From 1980-84, rookies got 5.1 percent of all available starts—but those same rookies accounted for 9.98 percent of available starts over their first four years. That's effectively double.

Again, partially fueled by the 1987 strike, the 1985-89 group got an even bigger share of starts over their first four years, 11.4 percent of all games. Ever since then, young quarterbacks have been given an ever-shrinking slice of pie.

The 1995-2000 second-day group was bolstered by the *cough* juggernaut second-round class of 1995: Stoney Case, Todd Collins, Billy Joe Hobert, Kordell Stewart and Eric Zeier, who somehow collectively managed 80 career starts. That group's UDFA class also seems shockingly capable—except it includes Kurt Warner, the human outlier, among their ranks.

Even then, the beefy 1995-99 group doesn't counter the overall trend: Quarterbacks are getting more and more starts, almost exponentially so, in their rookie years, but less over their first four seasons.

The 2010-2014 class, of course, has barely been chewed up, let alone spit back out—which is why they appear translucent on this chart—but with the Buffalo Bills trading for Matt Cassel and New York Jets nabbing Ryan Fitzpatrick, it's hard to see Manuel and Smith bucking the trend. Even guys such as Colin Kaepernick and Andy Dalton, who together unseated that 1995 group as the hardest-working class of second-rounders ever, may be looking for work come this time next year.

The Talent Disposal

This is the real problem with the schematic, systematic flattening of NFL offenses: Not all quarterbacks are natural trigger-pullers. There are plenty of quarterbacks more than talented enough to win in the NFL being cast aside because they don't fit into the ruthlessly efficient, painfully square-edged Joe Montana mold.

Unique talents such as Cutler, Kaepernick, Ryan Tannehill and Matthew Stafford came into the NFL as breathtaking passers or jaw-dropping athletes, but may spend their whole careers getting booed for not fitting quick slants into tiny windows like Warner did.

Meanwhile, teams are falling all over themselves to roll out painfully mediocre pocket-passing retreads who've never played a down of inspiring football. In a way, it makes sense: Why shell out high draft picks or big dollars for a spectacular talent when he won't bite ankles any more efficiently than a scrap-heap ankle-biter?

This is the grand irony of the scouting process. Teams spend countless hours and shameful sums of money flying executives and scouts all over the country to assess, quantify and project each quarterback's unique physical and mental toolset—then give them one season to play like Peyton Manning or not.

This April, Jameis Winston and Marcus Mariota will be served on a silver platter. The Brett Hundleys and Bryce Pettys of the class will get zapped in the microwave and dumped in some Tupperware. Injuries and/or a disastrous season will even spur some teams to unscrew Mason jars full of Blake Simses and Connor Hallidays, and dip a finger in just to see.

If none of them immediately satisfy their team's hunger for an elite difference-maker, they'll get pitched—and their team will go hunting for leftovers.

[Trivers]

Do we have the potential to be the best all around Team since the 1997 (Defense, weak offense) and 2003 (Offense, weak defense) Teams?

The Homer in me believes so.

This regime of Dorsey and Reid is making great progress towards that 1970 Team.

It's just a matter of time.

[DaNewGuy]

I think we can do big things this year. If we don't well I'll get over it, most of you shouldn't let football control your life, especially if you bitch about it all day and spend 13 years of your life on here

[Hammock Parties]

Originally Posted by Trivers

Do we have the potential to be the best all around Team when compared to 1997 (Defense, weak offense) and 2003 (Offense, weak defense) Teams?

The 1997 Chiefs did not have a weak offense.

They were 5th in points and 14th in yards.

If this team ever reached 14th in yards people here would be doing backflips. They haven't been better than 21st under Reid.

This is still a below average offense unless Jeremy Maclin is ****ing Superman.

[Sweet Daddy Hate]

Originally Posted by Trivers

This regime of Dorsey and Reid is making great progress towards that 1970 Team.

It's just a matter of time.

I don't get this. At all.

[Hammock Parties]

I can't wait for the first "it's just preseason" post of 2015.

[Sweet Daddy Hate]

Originally Posted by Numbah One

I can't wait for the first "it's just preseason" post of 2015.

Vanilla offense.

Just testing the waters.

Seeing who can play.

It takes at least 4 seasons for an offense/regime to hit stride.

It sucks that we had so many picks in a weak draft/every other team jumped our board.

Fisher is still developing.

[Baby Lee]

Originally Posted by Numbah One

I can't wait for the first "it's just preseason" post of 2015.

Because it's always BEEN just preseason.


Durr, can't wait for all the 'Alex is asleep because it's 2am on a Wednesday' excuses!!