Originally Posted by DJ's left nut:
Now lets be fair - Veach has just had to start spinning plates here.
He's had an MVP quarterback for damn near free over the last 2 seasons. That's a crutch that has allowed him to do the things he's done with Watkins and has allowed him the missfire on Hitchens. It's allowed him to get in a straight up bidding war with the Texans and just keep going until Mathieu signed.
Moreover, he's still in the 'lean' years of Clark's deal and even Jones/Mahomes.
From a cap standpoint, he's actually had a pretty easy go of it. He's had some guys here that are willing to play for less (Schwartz, Kelce) because they love the organization. And he had a weird situation with Hill that allowed him to get a significant discount there as well.
I think there's a good basis to say that in the future he'll demonstrate strong cap management skills, but I have a hard time saying at this point that he HAS. He's been a fortunate benefactor of having a head coach that people love playing for and simultaneously hasn't been forced to make any truly difficult 'cap casualty' decisions. Those decisions will come soon enough.
That's when we'll see just how good a cap manager he is. To date we've seen a GM that can/will be aggressive in utilizing his cap when he has a free MVP on his roster who affords him that ability. We'll see if he can still maintain that level of excellence when he has to tighten the belt a bit in the coming years.
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. [Reply]
Originally Posted by DJ's left nut:
The draft separates the good from the great.
Hill, Kelce, Jones, Schwartz and yes even Fisher are key players here who he inherited. And Hill, Kelce and Schwartz are going to get HoF consideration when all is said and done. We sure are quick to gloss over that.
The bar from his predecessor in that regard is pretty damn high. If this team isn't going to atrophy on his watch, it's going to be because he was able to bring in guys like say George Kittle in the 3rd round. And maybe he's done something like that with Hardman - a big time 'heat check' pick when easier bets like McLaurin were on the board. That may be a serious home-run for him before all is said and done.
Grabbing Thornhill instead of 'safe' pick at a position of need like Winovich and then piece-mealing the LDE spot together a bit was a risky gamble that worked out great (though the Thornhill pick specifically was almost universally lauded).
He clearly prefers swinging for the fences in the draft so if enough of those land, he'll continue to cycle in great players. But THAT'S the bar - great players. Because he inherited a few of those guys upon taking over and in the next handful of years, he'll need to replace 'em.
Will he do that? Time will tell. Hard to write that book just yet.
That’s been our strategy ever since Andy got here. Kelce, Mahomes, Jones, Tyreek, Hardman, Thornhill. Basically all these Guys are boom or bust. And sure Peters and Hunt were 2 gambles that failed, but they were hits and provided excellent value while they were here.
Coaching and environment matter so much in the league. With our coaching staff, I don’t think there’s any issue with boom or bust players. [Reply]
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.
Overhauling is an understatement. That defense was fucking abysmal. [Reply]
Veach helped bring us Mahomes and our first SB win in 50 years- yet some on here want to give the edge to a fucking Colts GM who way over-paid on Buckner and brought in Old Man Rivers. Fuck the Colts and anyone in their entire organization.
Please turn in your Chiefs fan card and move to Indy- thanks! [Reply]
He's done a great job in keeping this SB team together in the short term, but the real tell here (and what will be determinative for dynasty purposes) will be what Veach does 3-4 years down the road when a lot of Mahomes' current teammates will be gone and/or nearing their expiration dates.
Mahomes is a shit ton better than Brady ever was, so Veach will probably have to do less than Belichick did, but he'll still need talent around him to win SBs over the next 10+ years. [Reply]
Originally Posted by DJ's left nut:
The draft separates the good from the great.
Hill, Kelce, Jones, Schwartz and yes even Fisher are key players here who he inherited. And Hill, Kelce and Schwartz are going to get HoF consideration when all is said and done. We sure are quick to gloss over that.
The bar from his predecessor in that regard is pretty damn high. If this team isn't going to atrophy on his watch, it's going to be because he was able to bring in guys like say George Kittle in the 3rd round. And maybe he's done something like that with Hardman - a big time 'heat check' pick when easier bets like McLaurin were on the board. That may be a serious home-run for him before all is said and done.
Grabbing Thornhill instead of 'safe' pick at a position of need like Winovich and then piece-mealing the LDE spot together a bit was a risky gamble that worked out great (though the Thornhill pick specifically was almost universally lauded).
He clearly prefers swinging for the fences in the draft so if enough of those land, he'll continue to cycle in great players. But THAT'S the bar - great players. Because he inherited a few of those guys upon taking over and in the next handful of years, he'll need to replace 'em.
Will he do that? Time will tell. Hard to write that book just yet.
I agree. Veach has done well with talent. Great? We'll see. I understand your point there. But in terms of cap management... Brilliant. In terms of finding tons of cheap talent? Brilliant. Combine that with a generational qb and the bar for finding great talent everywhere is a lot lower. [Reply]
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.
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. [Reply]
Originally Posted by chiefzilla1501:
Also can't be understated how outstanding our nobodies played....
Charvarius ward
Breeland
Damien Williams
Wisnewski
Rankin (before the injury)
Pennel
Matt Moore
He might as well have picked these guys up from goodwill.
Very good point there. He absolutely deserves major marks for Ward.
If you're gonna give him credit for Breeland though, let's not forget that he passed on him in '18 when he was a street free agent and we were again a single stop away from an AFC championship. Could Breeland have helped there?
Williams is fine; fungible. System back who belongs on Andy's ledger. Again, I think you're overlooking the relativity aspect of this whole thing. Under Dorsey's tenure we were slapping him on the back for those same sorts of in-season additions that work out well. Why? Because Pioli never did 'em.
Well that's because Pioli was a pile of warmed over dogshit. My point is that MOST teams have a number of nice in-season pickups like that. The Chiefs aren't a lot different in that regard apart from the fact that their coach is a goddamn wizard who can hide someone like Reiter.
I'm simply trying to point out that in some instances we're giving him credit for things that all good GMs do and saying that makes him clearly the best. No - there are many good GMs in this league that do things like that.
Now a move like getting a top flight CB for a guard you were going to cut? Well that's unique. I think Ward is a genuine top 25 CB in this league and for some weird reason I completely air-mailed that one. Veach deserves enormous credit for that pickup and THOSE are the things that I think can distinguish him from a fairly select group of very good GMs going forward.
But using cap space made possible from a cheap QB to sign Sammy Watkins and Anthony Hitches? C'mon. He's not infallible and it's okay to point that out. [Reply]
Originally Posted by PAChiefsGuy:
In a sense yes. Should Mahomes be in HOF or considered the GOAT? I don't think many GMs around the NFL or NFL fans would consider Veach best GM in the NFL other than - homer Chief fans
Your ability to be completely ass-backwards wrong about such a wide variety of topics is very impressive. You're truly a jackass of all trades. [Reply]
Originally Posted by DJ's left nut:
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.
He wasn't frontloading contracts for a later date. He was loading this team up with short term deals we can easily get out of. Tempting for him to sign blue chip superstars. We've seen lots of teams load up on a short super bowl window by stockpiling talent for a few years only to see the cap explode in a few years once the dead money hits. The Chiefs aren't at risk of that. Because outside of the big 3 they barely have enough guaranteed money a few years out. You may consider guys like Watkins as luxury contracts and overpaid. I call them stopgap deals.
Veach loaded our team with a super bowl roster while giving us flexibility to keep mahomes and jones. He gave us a new 4 year window without saddling us with dead money deals. That is something they couldn't do around QBs like Russell Wilson. And at the end of the 4 years, he STILL managed to build flexibility into the mahomes deal to build a team around him. Flexibility guys like Aaron Rodgers didn't have. We have to get a lot of things right but the table is set.
On the jones deal... The deal itself wasn't brilliant. But I don't think it's a coincidence that jones got a 4 year deal while mahomes took a 4 year discount. Jones is a chief because of the brilliance of the mahomes contract. [Reply]
Originally Posted by PAChiefsGuy:
Yeah it was a good post and although I don't like him DJ did a great job there.
I like Veach but man he came into one hell of a great situation that most GMs in the NFL could only dream about. It's hard to compare him to say a GM taking over for Cardinals or Dolphins or some shit team like that.
So far though I like what Veach has done here.
As said before, the same argument has been had regarding Mahomes. [Reply]
Originally Posted by chiefzilla1501:
He wasn't frontloading contracts for a later date. He was loading this team up with short term deals we can easily get out of. Tempting for him to sign blue chip superstars. We've seen lots of teams load up on a short super bowl window by stockpiling talent for a few years only to see the cap explode in a few years once the dead money hits. The Chiefs aren't at risk of that. Because outside of the big 3 they barely have enough guaranteed money a few years out. You may consider guys like Watkins as luxury contracts and overpaid. I call them stopgap deals.
Veach loaded our team with a super bowl roster while giving us flexibility to keep mahomes and jones. He gave us a new 4 year window without saddling us with dead money deals. That is something they couldn't do around QBs like Russell Wilson. And at the end of the 4 years, he STILL managed to build flexibility into the mahomes deal to build a team around him. Flexibility guys like Aaron Rodgers didn't have. We have to get a lot of things right but the table is set.
On the jones deal... The deal itself wasn't brilliant. But I don't think it's a coincidence that jones got a 4 year deal while mahomes took a 4 year discount. Jones is a chief because of the brilliance of the mahomes contract.
We 'easily got out of' Watkins by overpaying him for another season. We 'easily got out of' Hitchens by extending him to a deal it will still hurt to walk away from.
The point is that we've been able to 'easily get out of' some of those deals by absorbing fairly substantial dead cap hits or extending guys to deals that we simply won't be able to do with any frequency going forward.
And that's part of what's made the degree of difficulty lesser for him. While his competition in the division is dragging along $20+ million mediocrity in Rivers and Carr, he's got the biggest swinging dick on the planet at 1/4 of that AND a few HoF caliber talents that were on the roster he took over who are were also below market due to pre-existing contracts or circumstances not of Veach's making.
This job hasn't been a difficult one. Now that's not to take away from the job he's done - but he has had it far easier than most. [Reply]
Oh, and not only did he change our defense overnight without saddling our cap. He did this while eating a shitload of dead money by outright getting rid of Houston, berry, and Ford contracts. Veach could have committed career suicide by throwing $20m in dead money at these guys. If veach didn't win a super bowl in 2 years, can you imagine how many chiefs fans would have destroyed him for wasting our window? That was a ballsy move. Not only did he make it work, taking their contracts off the books was huge in allowing us to sign mahomes and Jones. [Reply]
