Quote:
Originally Posted by Direckshun
I'm sorry but at least a couple of those years, people complaining about the corners were right.
They've been wrong since Spags arrived, however, because Sam Madison has been the best position coach on the team.
Except for last year, it's been reasonable to worry about the corner position, because the resources invested there have been minimal and the talent all entered the season with huge questions.
I don't know how applicable that is to this situation.
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Building a football team is tough, man. You know this. If there's a market inefficiency at a certain position because you have an insanely good coaching staff or because the coverages you draw up don't require the absolute best talent in the world, you roll with that plan. Each and every time.
Fans screamed about the CB position, not realizing that it was one of those things that the Chiefs just didn't care as much about. And those fans didn't know what the Chiefs knew about their team. And guess what? Those fans were wrong.
Who's to say the exact same situation isn't taking place with DE? Reid and the Chiefs have repeatedly said that QBs are getting too good and getting the ball out of their hands too quickly to just rely on your outside pass rush talent to pressure the QB. If you want that pressure, you're going to have to collapse the interior of the pocket because the shorter distance from DT to QB can make the difference when you only have 2 seconds to make a play or disrupt something. So what if that's exactly what the Chiefs are doing by getting explosive guys like Jones and Reed and allowing their DEs to not be as expensive provided they do the other parts of their jobs well? Remember when the plan was Alex Okafor for that opposite DE spot? And his backup Tanoh Kpassagnon, a dude who in the 3-4 was all but a giant bust (and still isn't that great, but being meh is better than sucking). Or how about Old Man Suggs? We've done just fine with those meh dudes at one of the DE spots all while Frank Clark drinks goat piss on the other side.
If the Chiefs valued the DE/Edge rush position the way common NFL pundits say you should (it being the third most important position behind QB and LT) then why would they go three straight offseasons without bothering to spend more than low tier free agent dollars or 5th round picks at one of the positions? It's not just, "Whoops we ran out of money." Football is a game of priorities, and along the way, there were any number of positions that the Chiefs could have opted to not pay/acquire/draft all so they could shore up talent at the DE spot.
I don't know about you, but what it says to me is the Chiefs are exploiting a market inefficiency in ways we don't understand because we're not privy to the player information they have. It's possible that they believe the league overvalues DE by a slight bit, and have instead chosen to spend picks and cash on the interior.