Quote:
Originally Posted by Pitt Gorilla
Why? Why not just wait for Mahomes and spend your other picks on supporting players?
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I strongly disagree with this line of thinking. Even though it hasn't even been a year since we drafted him, this kind of thinking takes for granted how Mahomes was a gift from God to this franchise after years of inexplicable curses. It's not as simple as "Why not just wait for Mahomes?" because if it were, then every team would have one.
The Chiefs needed 9 teams to pass on Mahomes. Not only that but we had trade-up competition with some pretty feisty teams led by GMs and coaches who know perhaps has much about QBs as Reid does. We had to outgun them to trade up to the right spot to grab him, which is far easier said than done, because the deal was done with a team that EASILY could have taken us to the cleaners far worse than they did in terms of trade compensation. If Mahomes is in a draft with weaker skill position players at the top, or if draft pundits, scouts, and media don't mistakingly label 2017 as a "bad" draft class for QBs, he might have gone in the top 3.
Mahomes also came onto the scene at a time when teams are still negative on Air Raid and Big XII-type spread QBs. The Texas Tech thing was a big deal to a lot of great NFL minds. Jared Goff had JUST gotten done sucking total eggs as the #1 overall pick. Teams were plenty scared to take these guys.
And on top of that, Mahomes truly is a once-every-five years kind of QB. The baseball background. The MLB pitching dad. The drive. The smarts. The guts. The ARM. All of that ****ing talent had to be placed in the body of one man and that one man had to be somehow stigmatized by a league just enough for us to sneak in, find a team dumb enough to trade out of that slot, fight off other teams for the right to draft him, and convince the ownership and players already on the team that this is the future.
Yeah, you can go ahead and wait for Mahomes. We did, and it worked out. But also keep in mind that we were arguably "waiting for Mahomes" ever since we flushed Blackledge down the toilet. That's over 30 years of waiting for Mahomes. So in the end, did that strategy ACTUALLY work out? Getting it right after 30 years is nice and all, but why not try to be proactive and get it right in a shorter time period than 30 years?