*****The Leo Chenal Thread*****

[Dante84]

More to come!

Leo Chenal was drafted with pick 103 of round 3 in the 2022 draft class. He scored a 9.99 RAS out of a possible 10.00. This ranked 3 out of 2419 LB from 1987 to 2022. https://t.co/unnXwkfpiT #RAS #Chiefs pic.twitter.com/YdwWEkOnmR

— Kent Lee Platte (@MathBomb) April 30, 2022

The moment our newest LB got the call he was joining the Chiefs 📲 @chenal_leo pic.twitter.com/2q3fLOFoPA

— Kansas City Chiefs (@Chiefs) May 4, 2022

[DJ's left nut]

Originally Posted by RunKC

That's my point. Mahomes is incredible and fixes a whole lot of shit.

WR's already cost us the 1 and 2 seed. Do you think this team wins the SB this year if Joe Burrow, Alex Smith or Josh Allen was the QB? I don't in any way see them doing that. No ****ing way.

It's okay to point out that our top guys made a huge mistake with Toney/Skyy and Mahomes made that shit work.

But to say 'bailed out' suggests they got lucky. They didn't.

It was part of a concerted effort to lean into Mahomes ability to make lemonade on the side of the ball he has some control over.

Those sorts of players just don't exist very often on defense so you have to take a very holistic and expensive approach (in terms of draft and/or cap capital). So they aggressively attacked an overarching defensive rebuild while relying on Mahomes to make the offense work just well enough.

It worked to their script, IMO. Were Toney and Moore mistakes - yup. But every team makes mistakes and honestly I think a lot of those mistakes are built into the plan. They give themselves a 'fudge factor' even if they don't know exactly where some of those mistakes will come from.

Maybe it would be Jones and/or Smith. Maybe Kelce's decline would be swift and sudden. I believe they absolutely built a margin for error into their thought process and the failures of Toney/Moore were part of that.

Now to that extent, with both of them, AND with MVS? No, I don't think they counted on that. And had MVS not eventually un****ed himself, it would've been the teams undoing. But as the post-season proved, they built a team that could win without any contributions from Moore and Toney. And it did. So that tells you almost exactly where there margin for error was.

[JPH83]

Originally Posted by RunKC

That's my point. Mahomes is incredible and fixes a whole lot of shit.

WR's already cost us the 1 and 2 seed. Do you think this team wins the SB this year if Joe Burrow, Alex Smith or Josh Allen was the QB? I don't in any way see them doing that. No ****ing way.

It's okay to point out that our top guys made a huge mistake with Toney/Skyy and Mahomes made that shit work.

This has kinda been my position. Having Mahomes is going to make a lot of things bad look OK and a lot of OK look great. But at some point I've got to agree with DJ. If the strategy is fix D and let Mahomes sort the O, it only sounds risky or lucky in a world where Mahomes isn't, well, Mahomes. Apparently he IS going to fix it, with Reid and Kelce. Kudos Veach for believing in the plan, because I sure as s*** didn't at times!

Plus, the defense is pretty damn good. McDuffie, Sneed, Williams, Watson, Chenal, Bolton, Tranquil...it aint perfect coughNnadicough but there's a LOT there he's really done well to acquire.

The next step in greatness for Veach will be winning a SB without Kelce and Jones. He does that and he's maybe the best ever.

[Pepe Silvia]

Originally Posted by Pasta Little Brioni

What are they saying? I'm not visiting that cesspool of human excrement

That hes the best GM in the league, yada yada, all good things.

[Pinchshot]

I've seen so many breakdowns I can't remember but one of the chiefs defensive breakdowns mentioned chenal on damn near every play. It was surprisingly good

[Pitt Gorilla]

Brady was often running around out there with just about nothing at WR, besides an occasional dude or so at TE or WR. The QB can make everyone better, including the rookies like Rice. Draft, develop, rinse, repeat.

This will seem especially astute once we see the Justin Jefferson numbers.