Which is why I just never felt the urgency to go ham replacing JJSS. He just shouldn't be terribly hard to replace.

A combination of Moore/Rice should be able to do so fairly easily. James backfills for the production of Moore/Hardman in their roles last season and you're at/above where you were last year, ESPECIALLY if MVS and Mahomes can develop a little more chemistry and Toney can give us even 12 healthy games.

This is a solid group. Not the best in the league but in the middle 1/3 somewhere, IMO.
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It wouldn't shock me to see James suck up alot of yards and snaps here. I'm not sure where Rice ultimately fits in at this point, but he's gonna be the outside guy so I'm kinda thinking they view him in the mold of a Sammy Watkins and Moore more of an inside guy.

I'm curious to see what they do with the RB room at this point.
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Exactly. With the addition of James and Rice, I'm not as worried as I was before.

I think for all the talk about Hyatt....we'd be sitting here trying to figure out where he would be getting snaps as a deep threat. He would have just been a replacement for MVS next year. I like Rice's fit better in this offense.
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Moore and Rice are so distinct as prospects that if you hated BOTH of them, there's just no pleasing you.

I didn't like Moore - I like Rice a LOT. Because they just do different things and have different body types and win in different ways. If you can't stomach EITHER of them, you're essentially demanding that every guy we draft is Julio Jones or you're going to hate them.

There has to be some room for being satisfied even if it's not exactly the pick you'd have made. If it's "Veach needs to substitute my judgment for his or he's an idiot..." then there's really no point in following the draft because it's just going to piss you off.
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You gotta figure Justin Watson is gonna end up being higher in line than Rice atleast early in the year.
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And there's always another Hyatt.

You need a replacement for MVS next year? Cool - look for him next year. In the meantime, you've taken a guy in Rice that can anchor your WR group as a set and forget X receiver relatively quickly. With Moore in the Y role and Toney as the Z. You need a burner - find one in 2024.

As I think about it, it's very similar to the Karlaftis pick. We didn't take a speed rusher last year because we wanted an anchor at the SDE role. And there is only so much draft capital available to you. So last year we took the SDE and that's an underappreciated and difficult role to fill. This year we took the bendier guy we can get speed from the other bookend from.

We just did the same thing at WR. X is an underappreciate role and not an easy one to fill in this scheme. We took a guy we think can do that while we have a veteran who can hold down the speed role for now (MVS). Next year we can go ahead and make a more concerted effort at a long-term speed player.

And it may simply not be necessary if Toney is what I think he can be.
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DJ, how do you feel about Rice's splits in man vs. zone? I found that a tad bit concerning, even though I don't think it's a big deal by any means.
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Feels like if there's another Hyatt or even Mims sitting there in round 2 next year, he'll probably be a Chief.
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This.

And it makes the offense more dangerous. We spread the ball around so much last year that we just ended up killing everybody’s 3rd corners and 2nd LB’s. Mixing and matching a variety of coverages with different types of players really made it hard for defenses to do anything but play zone, which Patrick destroys.

As long as Rice is a nice role player who catches the ball and makes some plays I’m happy. It’s gonna come down to his chemistry with Patrick. Hardman struggled with it, Skyy struggled with it. Hope Rice gets that connection down early.
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I will say this, for all the talk about bad hands and shit, Rice's QB play was awful. I'd imagine that has a lot to do with some of the "drops" he was credited with.

There's a reason he's constantly having to make acrobatic catches and those where he has to turn his body around. Ball placement is almost always off.
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I think we might really love James by the end of the season.

His catch rate was ridiculous last season. All we ever ask for from that 4th/5th WR is to be reliable. Even better if they can occasionally have a big game.

Guys like Demarcus Robinson could have the occasional big game, but you couldn’t count on them to not fuck things up occasionally.

I think that signing may be one that is sneaky good.
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I noticed that some of the plays he did make in man were SUPER difficult catches. I think beating man requires such good timing/precision from your QB that when you have bad QB play (and man did Rice have bad QB play last season) it's really hard to know how well you actually did it.

The measurables don't point to someone who can't beat man, nor does the will - he absolutely plays big and battles for the ball. But when you've got a guy missing his mark by 4-5 feet and throwing the ball late out of your cut, you really can't demonstrate it very well.

I think he'll be okay there. Do I think he'll be a short area monster? Not at all. Nor do I think the Chiefs expect that. But I think he'll be a guy who can catch a ball quickly against man and use his physicality at/after the catch point to turn those into big 1st downs.
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Yeah, I'm a James fan. He was one of the guys I was saying we should be going after during the 2nd wave of FA. He's a solid ballplayer and coming from Kafka for a year, he should be up to speed sooner than most.

I think we can pencil him in for 600 yards and not be too far off. He can really contribute, IMO.
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I want to say that most of the hate with this pick is because people are locked onto this whole WR1 thing. They want that alpha WR that is going to soak up 120 targets a season. That's not happening in this offense....at least not now. Kelce is your alpha and will be until he slows down. This team just proved that you don't need a true WR1 to have a high scoring offense.
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Agreed, check my other post too, I think the QB play had a lot to do with the perceived negatives in his game.

I saw quite a few drops where the ball was behind him or something and he's trying to make a difficult catch. Then he probably gets credited with a "drop".
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