Originally Posted by KC_Connection:
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.
That's literally what this contract allows for. Which loops back to left nut's position on drafting as the true deciding factor. [Reply]
Originally Posted by DJ's left nut:
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.
He inherited a great offense. But that was a legit defense in the playoffs and he built it under extraordinary circumstances. And as good as our offense was we needed that defense big time in the playoffs. That wasn't generational talents like mahomes or Reid. It was barely Dorsey. Veach gets to own that one. [Reply]
Originally Posted by chiefzilla1501:
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.
Was it?
I mean Houston and Berry were absolute no-brainers. And few had a problem with moving on from Ford (most were upset only with the return).
Again, we're circling back to the 'giving him credit for pretty routine stuff' complaint I have here.
NOBODY thought Houston at $20 million was a good decision. And the moment Berry elected not to get the surgery and the Chiefs had an open path to getting around his injury guarantees, everyone saw that as an open and shut case.
Now the combination of the Ford and Clark deals it TOTAL - that's a ballsy move. Look at it from that perspective and you're right. That's an incredibly aggressive decision from Veach and in the end, we won a SB so he deserves that credit. Being willing to essentially move Ford and a 1st rounder for Clark and then paying a premium for Clark over Ford....that's putting his dick on the table a bit.
I'm not saying give him no credit. I'm saying give him an appropriate amount and I think in some ways we're overdoing it. The hard part is yet to come. We're staring straight down the barrel of 'the disease of more' as Parcells put it. That's gonna be the true trial by fire for our boy. [Reply]
Originally Posted by chiefzilla1501:
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.
How did he not 'saddle our cap'?
Clark, Mathieu and Hitchens are hauling around MASSIVE deals. Deals made possible by a cheap QB contract and a generational WR who had to take an ass-kicking in contract negotiations because he was stuck in a legal mess. Not to mention about $8 million in under-market surplus on his Left and Right tackles who were already here when he got here.
He hasn't put us in cap hell, no, but he paid the 2 marquis additions he brought in contracts that were at/near record levels. What's the 'finesse' in that? Where's the 'genius'? Especially when one of them also cost a hell of a lot of draft capital. [Reply]
It's hard to compare GMs across the NFL especially if you only say, "Well, look at all these good players we've added through the draft and from random dumpsters!" Perhaps half of the fans around the league claim their GM is the best in the NFL and will attempt to prove it by compiling a list of talent their guy has added to the roster. Rick Spielman of the Vikings has a VERY underrated resume in that regard. The few dozen Charger fans out there will often claim that Telesco is the best because he hits his drafts out of the park. And hey, yeah, he's more of a meme at this point than he is anything else, but Jerry Jones is fully capable of finding talented players. Again, if we're just making lists of great moves, all of these GMs can boast strong resumes.
You're not special if you can find good players in the NFL. You can find good players. Your division opponents can do that, too. So can half the league.
The best GMs are the ones who not only find those players, but they also do so with a cohesive vision and a plan. Bill Belichick isn't that great at drafting, but he wins Super Bowls with weirdly unspectacular rosters because he is always one step ahead of the rest of the league at zigging when everybody else is zagging. Veach has been in a very fortunate environment to begin his career, but he's been VERY active the past couple of offseasons and isn't afraid to challenge conventional wisdom, like when everybody says he's constantly riding too close to the cap limit and he manages to bring just about everybody back for another Super Bowl run.
And sometimes those strategies don't work, or they do work but even the best GMs make too many mistakes in implementing them. But ideally if you're in a supportive environment, your owner will keep you around long enough so you can ride out the cycle of disappointment and try again. [Reply]
@Chiefs General Manager Brett Veach joining us on #NFLLive tomorrow on @espn. The man is making it happen! You will want to tune in. Promise. #NFL [Reply]
Originally Posted by RealSNR:
The Patriots have convinced the league that you either have to get rid of good players and be ruthless to win Super Bowls, or have lightning strike in a bottle and have all of your best players on rookie deals and fill it out with veterans who still have stuff left in the tank.
Instead of a Machiavellian Hitler running things, you have a wonderful, friendly head coach who seeks to teach, not crack the whip. Players have room to be themselves. Second chances are freely given, both on and off the field.
Instead of putting a premium and people KNOWING you're secretive, you just do it without bugging your own employees' offices. Veach's moves tend to come out of NOWWHERE. The Patriots hold their cards close to their chests, but they also TELL everybody that they can't see anything and make it known.
Instead of telling their great young players to go **** themselves, the Chiefs try to keep them. The Patriots kill individuality and development if you're not playing on a dirt cheap contract. The Chiefs try to create legacies. The Patriots constantly change their team-building philosophy every couple of years, and old guard players who previously fit them just have to get the hell out. The Chiefs are aware of NFL trends, but rather than re-inventing the wheel, the Chiefs work THROUGH their great players while also having longterm vision.
What a wonderful, bright, and positive team we have!
Originally Posted by Chiefshrink:
It's still a collective effort with Reid's blessing in the end IMHO. Reid can downplay his part all he wants but it still goes through Andy.
Originally Posted by DJ's left nut:
I think he got caught in between.
Early on in his tenure there, they had a ton of cap space but hadn't built a foundation around Luck. Then Ballard steps in and gets that foundation built damn near overnight....and Luck walks away.
He was tip-toeing forward last season w/ stuff like the Houston deal and then got more aggressive this season w/ a move like Buckner. But I think if he had Luck still you'd have seen a similar off-season in 2020 to what Veach did in 2019.
Where I give a slight edge to Ballard is that I think he's the best pure eye for talent around right now. I look at that 2018 draft and am just in awe of the thing. And I think Turay is just scratching the surface and could be a force this year if he has recovered from his injury against us.
DeCosta is another guy who deserves a nod here, but the track record is still too short. He ran that scouting department before he took over last year as GM in Baltimore and I think he's been the driving force behind their success for about a decade now. We'll see if he can continue that run with all the additional administrative burdens, but he's a damn good front office guy.
I think I'd still go with Ozzie here, but Ballard is good as well. [Reply]
Originally Posted by RealSNR:
Different circumstances, too, though.
Veach has had QB stability, Ballard had an unprecedented lost season with Luck in 2017 and a surprise retirement before the season started.
Veach was developed through the organization, culture, and coach that he took over for, while Ballard has had to forge his own path while taking over for a team with a QB and absolute dogshit at the other positions. He also had to hire a new head coach and navigate the team through that Josh McDaniels fuckery.
Veach is employed by a stable owner with a smoking hot daughter. Ballard is employed by a 60-year alcoholic and drug addict.
It's all well and good that Ballard has assembled young talent AND saved cap space in three years, and yes, circumstances are clearly different from one another, but if the roles were reversed and Veach got the Colts job and Ballard got the Chiefs job back when each guy was hired, would Ballard be aggressive like Veach? Would we have all the WR weapons we do on offense for Mahomes, or would we look more balanced? Would we be spending that cap space and going for all the marbles with aggressive moves? Would we have a Super Bowl right now? Likewise, we can assume Veach's aggression in KC would lead to misfires in Indy and when combined with the instability of the franchise would lead to some pretty bad seasons, but would Veach actually take that approach if he were in charge of the Colts?
Coulda shoulda woulda.
Veach went for the gold and got the gold. Sure he tripped over his dick early, but a trophy is a trophy.
Ballard had the tools to go for the gold in 2018 and went Ted Thompson. While it's great to have vast capital, it's still not for long and he flubbed it.
Veach in Indy could have possibly got them one Lombardi with Luck before the goony motherfucker quit to go bird watching or whatever the fuck he's doing now. [Reply]
