Quote:
Originally Posted by chiefzilla1501
Sure, but he hasn't had an easy go. He knew we had a short window with a cheap mahomes. He was loading up a super bowl winner to exploit that cap savings, while overhauling a defense, while still making sure he had long term gigantic available cap to keep both mahomes and Chris jones. And he pulled it off brilliantly. We built a good enough team to win a super bowl, we get to keep that team intact for a few years, and we're not even bleeding from the cap yet. That's remarkable.
None of that was by accident. Veach brilliantly frontloaded a ton of contracts to give us cap flexibility for mahomes to backload his. He brilliantly locked us into a TON of 2-3 year deals so we can stockpile talent while buying us time to draft our future. Sure, who knows how we'll look a few years from now. But veach set us up perfectly to be really damn good for at least the next 3 or 4 years. He was planning for the spinning plates years ago. That's why our plates are spinning, not smashing on the ground.
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He didn't really frontload. Moreover, the 'concept' of frontloading a contract to make space at a later date is an outdated concept in the rollover era in the NFL.
I wouldn't say he locked into a 'ton' of 2-3 year deals either. Watkins and Mathieu clearly fit into this category, but Watkins is EXACTLY the kind of 'easy' contract he could do because of Mahomes cheap deal. He wildly overpaid for Watkins and nobody can argue otherwise. He paid Watkins as a #1 wideout to go be a #2. That's no sort of clever cap management - it's have money, will spend.
And again, that's potentially laudable given the window he was in, but it doesn't speak to any real long-term genius when it comes to managing the cap. It's just overspending on a luxury item because he could. Okay.
And for the middle of the roster guys like Wilson - well that's just what players of that caliber get. The league's not giving out long-term deals to mid-level players.
Regarding Jones - what was 'brilliant' about it? His cap figure this season is going to be roughly the tag. He signed a contract a tick beyond the market Buckner set. What Veach did was fine - but it was market. It was nothing earth shattering. As for Mahomes - kid wanted to stay here and lets be honest, I'm going to guess many of those negotiations were done w/ Clark Hunt and whoever the team cap specialist is.
Name a GM that entered his job with a better foundation than Veach. With a better roster and organization that was set up for long-term success. Yes, relatively speaking, his gig has been easy. I don't see why it's hard for some to acknowledge that fact.
Veach has succeeded. He's done a good job. That's all without argument at this point because flags fly forever. But this is one of those instances where people are trying to place a higher degree of difficulty on what he's done than is warranted. NOBODY in the league has had a smoother path forward than him. Nobody. Has he fumbled it? Nah, though you could say that maybe a better LB signing instead of Hitchens and Fuller instead of Watkins yields us a title in 2018 as well - but the '19 SB erases those sins.
I'm just not going to pretend like Veach came in here and overhauled some woebegone franchise and performed miracles. This team was set up for greatness when he took it over. He made some very good moves to put it over the top but I don't think he's doing anything exceptionally difficult in that regard.