If I were Brett Veach, Part 5: resetting and reloading.

How I'd move forward if I were the Chiefs' general manager, looking to build for the future while contending in the present.

We plan, and Brett Veach (apparently) laughs.

I had a whole plan laid out for the Chiefs offseason, one that I thought was a pretty darn good one. Things have gone… well, differently. Not badly necessarily (though I have some pretty serious questions), but differently. If you look back on Part 4 of the “If I were Brett Veach” series, you can see that Veach’s path has differed radically from the course I’d laid out.

Multiple waves of free agency have come and gone with little action on the defensive side of the ball. Outside of signing Justin Reid (who I really like) and bringing in a pair of role players in safety Deon Bush (whose Twitter game is phenomenal) and linebacker Jermaine Carter, the Chiefs have mostly stood pat or let players walk, leading to some pretty serious questions as to what the plan is on the already-inferior portion of the roster. Bush and Carter were likely brought in to replace snaps from Dan Sorensen and Ben Niemann, so those signings at least answer a few questions. But the most serious ones remain.

And then, of course, there’s the other side of the ball, where… well, you know the drill. Tyreek Hill was traded for a plethora of draft picks. Darrel Williams appears to be out. JuJu Smith-Schuster, Marquez Valdes-Scantling, and Ronald Jones are in.

Those moves, in particular (of course) the Hill trade, have set the Chiefs on a drastically different course than the one they were on just a few weeks ago. The roster looks very different without the superstar receiver and with a newfound fortune of draft capital (as well as some extra cap space for maneuverability).

Field Yates @FieldYates

Following the trade of Tyreek Hill, the Chiefs now have 12 picks in the 2022 NFL Draft. No team has more. They own two picks in the 1st, 2nd, 3rd and 4th round. A major opportunity to replenish the roster in a hurry, especially by addressing their need at WR.

And so, much like the Chiefs, it’s time to reset the “If I were Brett Veach” series. I laid out a course for what I would have down. Now it’s time to look at how I’d move forward if I were Veach, given the current path the team is on.

The team, now flush with picks and some breathing room in the salary cap (which is incredibly flexible regardless, but obviously even more so now with Hill’s 2022 cap hit and potential future cap hits off the books), clearly has an eye on building for the future and is looking at the Second Mahomes Window for a Super Bowl. That’s all well and good, but they still have the talent to contend for a Super Bowl this year as well. How does one balance out the need to create a good future with the desire to maximize 2022?

Let’s figure it out and be Brett Veach once more, charting a course for what I would do for the remainder of free agency and with pre-draft buildup if I were the Chiefs’ general manager.