OK, but I'm of the opinion that they just might be planning to pay BOTH Smith and the LT.

We're all smart enough here to realize this is the last year of Jawaan Taylor's salary on the books. If they do keep Smith, it's the last year of Thuney as well almost certainly.

Creed's hit in 2025 is around $10M. Smith's would be around $7-8M. So there is no real window of time where the OL is just eating up some astronomical amount of money.

And IF they do decide to pay both positions, that means your depth is in great shape too. Odds are, you're going to need someone to step up and play at some point and if that means Kingsley and Wanya are swing players at T/G and Nourzad is your backup C, I can see strength in that.

So I've laid out how the spending on the OL really isn't that much of an issue, so then you have to ask yourself, if they don't keep Smith and sign a new LT, how do they use that money in a way that benefits the 2025 team more? Answers may exist, but this FA class does suck out loud.

I think it's totally on the board that Andy Reid is ****ing tired of this middling offense and is going to fix it hell or high water. Draft a RB in this class with this potential OL they are trying to put together and see where things go.
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Thuney hasn't been shit on except when he was expected to try and salvage LT. Humphrey hasn't been shit on except for a handful of games where he snapped the ball low for some reason and when he got paid.

Trey Smith gets shit on because he's susceptible to bad games and isn't in the elite tier with Thuney and Humphrey. Jawaan Taylor gets shit on because of his idiotic penalties, which have demonstrably pissed off Andy Reid more than any other Chiefs player I can remember ever.
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Because when you get paid like a B+ player and play like a B+ player, you're fine.

When you get paid the highest G contract in the league and play like a B player, there in lies the problem.

It's all cost allocation.
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You don't HAVE to use the money now, though. Cap rolls over and we're going to need every cent of it really quick here as we hit the real teeth of both Mahomes and Jones respective deals.
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There's a lot of truth in that. Won't shock me if this year they apply real pressure on Taylor to either cut the penalties way back or go to Morris.
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The world champs just paid a guy $17M per year to be a healthy scratch throughout the playoffs.
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Because they've got cheap draft picks being all pro's.

Look, you guys who were "let Trey walk" all year.....what happened?

Now that you have some smoke we're gonna sign him, it's being justified.

What happened?
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Most of us thought this money would go to Joe Thuney in an extension, but he appears to be close to retirement or just being cut after 2025, which would make sense bc he’d be 34 at that point.

I’m not gonna throw my hands in the air over a team overpaying to keep a B+ guard that is a good player. I can’t do it. Anything that helps our most valuable asset in franchise history is perfectly logical to me.

As much as I think the upside for Kingsley is there at G, he literally just started playing the position like 2 months ago. The kid never played it in college, and to my knowledge he didn’t in high school either. No guarantee he’s gonna be even Trey Smith on a bad day caliber good.

I’m not gonna bitch at the logic dude. Put truth serum in Veach and I guarantee he regrets not having Orlando Brown Jr work out after the catastrophic LT play we’ve seen this year.

Bc sure Orlando Brown Jr isn’t great. He’s a “decent” playable LT, something the Chiefs didn’t have on the roster last year.

I would have taken an overpay for him to not have what happened in the SB happen, bc I can guarantee you that if he was the LT we would not have gotten absolutely ass raped all game long by a 4 man rush.

This team has gotten embarrassed bc of the OL getting historically raped. Yeah, I don’t mind overpaying for good players on the OL if THAT doesn’t happen anymore.
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To your first sentence, I'm the guy who keeps saying they have to nail the draft no matter who they sign if the dynasty is going to continue for the next 2-4 years.

I'm optimistic by nature and everyone's got their right to fan how they want.

I personally prefer to try to sink into the minds of Veach/Andy and try to see what I think they're seeing each offseason. More fun for me that way, and they've earned the trust as much as anybody.

Doesn't mean they won't be wrong. Jawaan Taylor's deal hasn't been worth the money to this point even if I don't hate him as much as average fan boy. That's the penalties more than his play in my mind.

Andy and Brett aren't idiots. They've got 100x the info and resources regarding who these players are than we do, inside and outside the building. If they're paying Trey Smith, who they've spent four years with now, there's on-field and off-field reasons for that which I'd prefer to dissect rather than just trying to suggest they're idiots even though they're all-time greats at what they do.
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"How can you guys possibly give the best organization in football the benefit of the doubt?"
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That's fine.

But this line of thinking quickly leads to the dissolution of this site as there's really nothing to discuss other than "whatever they do I'm for".

Which again, fine. Honestly, none of us have any say in it anyway, so we're just twiddling our dicks here.

To each his own I guess.

I don't get how "Gotta keep Mahomes clean by signing a G to a 5 year extension who was just on the OL that proceeded to not keep him clean" logic really works though.
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It's all a shell game.

Signing Smith works and keeps him here, but it just subtracts money you can spend elsewhere.

So if you need to spend money to get G's, but decide to go cheap at....DE or LB. Again, fine.

I'd argue that it's easier to find competent G's than it is competent DE's, but that argument atleast makes sense to me. Not overpaying OBJ for average play has allowed them to go sign other guys and or keep guys they like.
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Guys like me taking the other stance helps the board. I'm never going to convince everyone here to use the lens I do, that's no problem.

In my efforts to use Andy's lens, I think it's "let's keep the best run blocker AND sign a LT so we not only fix the problem that is LT, but we also position ourselves to be able to run the football against all fronts as long as we have running backs available who can break off big plays when they're there".

Creed, Joe, and Trey have kinda been our 4-minute offense for the past four years. They've helped us close a lot of games out despite being a passing team.
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yeah -- I'm pretty careful about specifically decided when/if I'll 'defer to the team' but it's usually on a sort of projection question.

Can Alaric Jackson make the transition to our system for instance -- if they think he can, I'm on board. If they don't, they won't sign him. Whatever they do there, I'm fine saying that they see that better than I do.

But signing a RG to a market-setting contract? One that doesn't ideally fit our system? Presumptively out of fear and/or inertia?

No - I ain't deferring there.

Because as I said early on in this thread -- does ANYONE think we'd be going after Trey Smith as a free agent if he'd have come from Arizona?

This isn't a scouting question -- this is resource management. I don't feel any need to defer there.
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It's easier to find a competent guard than it is to find literally any position on a football field apart from punter.

And right behind that is C.

The idea of spending $60 million to get 3 of them is just absolutely loony tunes.
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