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Always good to be as prepared as possible!

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deletedFeb 19, 2022·edited Feb 19, 2022
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One thing that's somewhat fascinating is that there are a few more tackles available this year in FA than there were last year. I'm curious how those negotiations go!

With regards to Wharton, I'm not sure he's got the weight/sand to really sit in for Nnadi's snaps. He plays with unusual strength, but vs double teams can be tough, especially if he doesn't see the angle it's coming from. Wharton is more like 290 or so as opposed to Nnadi's 310 to 320.

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deletedFeb 18, 2022·edited Feb 19, 2022
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I came away with the same conclusion about Soren versus Seth in their strategies. Both make a convincing case. I finally wind up just taking a deep breath and trusting that Veach and his crew are eminently qualified to sort it all out and take action. Not to say they won’t make errors, but as Soren would say, “They are in the get-it-right business.” The rest of us indulge in this as a hobby. And a fun hobby it is as a spectator. As I always say, from March to August my Chiefs are always undefeated!

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It's a fun hobby, but I'm glad it's not my job hahaha

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By the way, Soren’s plea to keep adding juice to the offense rings true to my belief as well. As much as I’d like to shore up our defense, just do so after we have insured that the pipeline of weapons and protections for Patrick have been been wisely filled. A good defense may or may not aid in securing the SB trophy, but a mediocre offense assuredly will not. And as we have seen recently, Patrick cannot do it by himself. It is truly a TEAM sport.

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That's one area Soren and I definitely agree!

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Seth and Petro were in opposition about Chris Jones two years ago. Seth won me over by a sliver. I would like to hear them talk about the idea of trading CJ these days...

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I just looked. He's not tradable if we have to eat dead money, which is $32,000,000. I guess he better bring Burrow down next year in the playoffs.

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To me, blaming Jones (who was the best player on the field on defense in every playoff game this year) for postseason issues is misplaced. He catches more ire than any elite player I can ever remember, and it's a mystery to me.

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I’m not blaming him for the loss at all. In his defense Burrow got the ball out pretty fast against us and they stuck to the run keeping our d line off balance. I just wish that he’d finished the sack when he had two hands on him. He certainly needs help up front, that is for sure.

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Without hearing the segment, I can tell you that Soren (who is awesome) and I land in pretty different camps in terms of the salary cap, so it wouldn't be too surprising if, despite agreeing on many things, we'd come to very different conclusions as to a best course of action with certain players.

I'm of the opinion that high-level players are almost always worth the price given the flexibility of the salary cap, and where teams get in trouble is when they pay mid-or-low-level players high-level money (or even midlevel money in terms of bad players). He generally tends to look a little harder at positional value when deciding whether a player is worth big money even if they're a good player.

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I think the fact that he's the best non-Donald interior pass rusher in the NFL makes it an easy choice tbh. He's one of the more valuable players on the defensive side of the ball in the entire league, consistently elite in wins despite seeing a great deal of extra attention every single year.

You don't hurt your team signing dudes like that to big deals IMO. You hurt them by signing subpar guys to big deals.

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haha "don't fight fair" is my motto.

Correct on that list! Clark was a tough one to swallow, because he was SO consistent and SO healthy for years prior to joining KC. But it's a good example that one never knows, even with vets, how things will go.

For me, the contracts of Hitchens and Clark (combined with their "meh" play) are what hindered things the most. Imagine if those guys had played at a level commensurate with their pay (say, top 8 guys or so at their position) and how different the defense would've looked.

That's where you gotta get it right MOST of the time with those big deals, because it can set you back.

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I think that's a really good observation, and it goes with the lunging issue I wrote about here. He generally has no need for it, as Grunhard points out. And with his lack of change of direction speed it can put him in a really tough position, as he's not going to be able to recover from getting off balance the way a quicker guy would.

It's definitely correctable, and part of that is him learning to win with his feet and hips as much as his upper body, which is something Heck does a great job working with guys on.

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Woah woah woah. You’ve been watching the Chiefs since 1964 and you think you’re APPROACHING curmudgeonhood? I have some really bad news for you, Hoss.

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The woman has put up w/you for 62 years so she's a saint. God bless her. I'm 59; I understand the inclination to curmudgeonhood. I'm more "When did that start hurting?", which might increase my curmudgeness a bit.

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That's very, very kind of you to say, and it makes me genuinely happy to hear it! I don't know about you, but the more I learn about football and how nuanced it really is, the more I love it!

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The people running base ball are indeed intent on ruining it, it feels like!

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OBJ is like the boss at the end of an NES game who is so overpowered you find yourself being ruthlessly humiliated every time you try something, until you finally find out some obscure weakness that if you are good enough you can exploit for a win here and there.

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Well put! And perhaps, if he can get his feet about 5-10 percent better, he'll be able to shore up that weakness enough to be considered what I believe the kids refer to as "OP" (overpowered).

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His wins are really fun to watch, genuinely dominant in a way that's hard to do over pros.

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The subscribers over at KCSN were batting around Spotrac's contract prediction for OBJ of 5 years, $117 mil. I thought it was insane until I gamed out the numbers. He's clearly an above average left tackle. I would peg that value at about $18 mil next year. Add in 10% inflation per year to peg to the growing salary cap and here is his yearly breakdown - $18 mil, $19.8, $21.9, $24, $26.4 for a total of 5 years, $109.8 mil. Fans should be prepared for a big number but, in reality, it will probably be the correct evaluation of him as a player.

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One advantage KC has is the current franchise tag number is under 17 mil, so they'll start there with the "per year" negotiations is my guess. I don't think the number you're looking at is too far off.

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Feb 18, 2022Liked by Seth Keysor

Yeah it's $16.5 mil and a second tag is $19.8 mil and a third tag would be $28.5 mil (lol) so I took those numbers into consideration.

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Feb 19, 2022·edited Feb 19, 2022

We can assume that you'll have more to say about this in a future "If I were Veach" articles?

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You can!

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Great article Seth. Definitely picked up on the improvement between Mahomes and his line as the year progressed. It seems to me that the interior OL is a perfect complement to Brown's weakness too. So I think it makes Brown a very good fit in pass protection. Run game is a different story. Chiefs love outside zone and our tackles were pretty bad at it. Hopefully the Chiefs run power more. It fits everyone but Thuney really well it seems.

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deletedFeb 18, 2022·edited Feb 18, 2022
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You are exactly correct!

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How about we try to resign Damien Williams if he is a free agent? I like him even more than McKinnon.

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I'd welcome him back. I really like him as a player. Definitely interesting (as BPD noted) how limited a role he had in CHI.

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Thuney can get it done in the power run game as well IMO. He's versatile. Humphrey too. It's a matter of Smith and Brown trying to reach that makes some of that stuff tough to do.

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Obviously, the dollars and years matter. I don't think he deserves to or would exceed the Williams deal with the 49ers, but a long-term deal likely makes him the second highest paid left tackle in the league for a while.

The one piece of leverage the team has is the franchise tag. Brown has a ton of leverage given the investment we have already made to acquire him and in Mahomes of course. I think he will likely be tagged and the negotiate a deal much like what happened with Jones two years ago.

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That's the most likely development IMO. My understanding (and I am NOT breaking news guy or an insider or anything like that, so take this FWIW) is that Brown is a top priority and has been.

I think it makes sense to offer him something that reflects the franchise tag giving KC a little leverage but also reflects the current LT market. The biggest issue will be, as it ever is, guaranteed dollars as opposed to fake dollars.

One thing that'll be interesting is his contract vs his former teammate in Baltimore, Staley. Baltimore handed him 64 mil FULLY guaranteed, which is crazy (compared to Trent W having 45.1 mil guaranteed).

If they're able to get away with a much more palatable guaranteed number (between 30 and 40), the per year stuff won't be as big a deal to me. That might be tough to do though given the current numbers on the most recent LT contracts.

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That's the salary that worries me the most.

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I finally had the strength to rewatch the AFCCG again last night. In trying to figure out what happened to Patrick, I concluded that he still has a lack of trust with two players. One of them you mentioned in your breakdown, Mecole Hardman (after watching him being chippy on the sideline, I hope he can be in Patrick's vicinity this off-season). I also believe that his unnecessary bailing in the pocket was a lack of trust in Brown. Like you, I thought Brown was pretty good and I put the sack he gave up on Patrick for the deep drop. I think Brown is good enough to re-sign and that if we do it correctly, he may be a bargain in years 4 and 5.

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Mahomes was gunshy across the board in the 2nd half. A genuinely strange performance.

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Interesting note about Stanley. He’s played 7 games in the last 2 years. He’s NEVER played 16 games in a season. Brown has done that 3 times now. Stanley has started 63 games in 6 seasons. Orlando Brown? 58 in 4. There isn’t a single GM that would say Orlando is a better player than Stanley…BUT… Always being there and not having to revert to someone like Villanueva matters. It matters a whole lot and goes back to my point about durability. I have zero problem giving significant guarantees cause the history is there. How do you think Baltimore feels choosing Stanley over Brown giving him 62 million in guarantees to see him play 7/33 games in 2 years?

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Great work, Seth.

A team as good as the Chiefs should not be able to acquire their long-term left tackle from a conference playoff rival, but Veach exploited an unusual situation and pulled it off. While I think Trent Williams is the best athlete in the NFL, I am glad we didn't pay him $24MM/yr if he didn't want to be in KC. We're on the right side of the value curve at several key positions, and LT is just one where we're going to have to pay market value for a good but imperfect asset in the interest of stability. Andy Heck deserves a ton of credit for getting Brown up to speed so quickly and helping keep him from being the penalty machine I was prepared for. I will be surprised if we don't see meaningful improvement next season, too.

I also appreciate your note about the RT spot impacting Brown, and Mahomes' need to self-scout for habits picked up from playing behind an irreplaceable Hall of Fame RT in Mitchell Schwartz. Mitch was sorely missed at times, and Heck did an amazing job getting 2 new tackles up to the level he did while replacing the interior as well. That is not talked about enough.

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Schwartz's presence was indeed desperately missed. Mahomes has gone his whole career with one of the best pass protectors alive on the right side. MASSIVE adjustment for him this year that doesn't get talked about enough, as he's adjusting to a wildly different left tackle.

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My initial thought when the trade was announced was "Why?" With the Ravens widely regarded last year as a top challenger to the Chiefs' AFC dominance, why would they trade a Pro Bowl tackle to the team they're trying to catch that happened to be desperate for tackle help? They basically erased the Chiefs greatest offseason weakness while removing a difficult to obtain asset from themselves.

My second thought was, "Hell, yes!" The Chiefs were facing the specter of replacing both starting tackles, clearly a daunting task, yet half of the equation was solved in one fell swoop. Had they decided to instead invest in a tackle with last year's #1 pick, the odds of finding the equivalent player are miniscule and certainly not a rookie tackle.

A year later, it looks even better. The concerns about the transition to the Chiefs' style of offense from the Ravens were quickly abated by Brown's steady improvement and Mahomes' adjustment to the new line in general, and specifically to Brown's strengths. I'm hopeful that he and the Chiefs are able to agree to terms of an extension this offseason as the price is only going to go up and doing the contract now gives the team more flexibility to address the pass rush and secondary now.

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To this day that trade is still baffling to me. Maybe the Ravens didn't get as good an offer from anywhere else, but as you said, it was a huge boost for a team that was trying desperately to fix its OL across the board.

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Great article and great conclusion. He’s not Trent Williams but who is. The one thing he has over him? Durability. I have zero problem doing an extension with him because of that and in a weird way the way he wins seems to protect his body. The other reason is the opportunity to use the tag. If we extend him we can tag Mathieu if we want this year and Tyreek next year if we need to. It would be dumb to do this song and dance all over again and wish we could tag both him and Tyreek next year.

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"in a weird way the way he wins seems to protect his body." I think this is a great point, and it's not weird at all. He wins by staying centered and in control (of his body), and it's very easy to understand why that would protect him. Consider the opposite, if the only way he could win was to lunge or over-extend--everyone would agree those are the sorts of motions that increase the danger of injury. So the fact that he depends on NOT doing that to win absolutely pencils out in favor of durability.

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He definitely stays on his feet a ton, which promotes longevity, and has been healthy to date. He rarely gets rolled on either. He's a much smarter player than he gets credit for. Some of it is luck of course, and hopefully his luck stays good!

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Feb 18, 2022Liked by Seth Keysor

No TLDR here. I read the whole thing. I like your long articles with explanations and observations. Speaking of which I recognized something about why I thought Brown was struggling more than he actually did. You pointed out how we fans got used to watching Fisher and never really saw him chasing a defender at the top of the arc. See it all the time with OBJ. 💡 moment.

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For sure, it's a very different look! On the flip side of things, you would see Fish get blown backwards towards the QB, something that's very rare with Brown.

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Orlando Brown Jr. does not have the body I would expect out of a top tier pass rusher (Eric Fisher either, for that matter) but I've learned to trust your expertise...

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I appreciate you! We'll see how things go this next year (with him being back a virtual certainty, whether with a long term deal or on the tag.

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The best thing about Brown are his dominant wins. It's hilarious to watch the best pass rushers in the league get rag-dolled and thrown to the ground. They get up and act like they're not embarrassed, but we all know they are. I literally laughed out loud at some of his best snaps this year. 🤣

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Feb 19, 2022Liked by Seth Keysor

And Trey seems to have that same skill as well!

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Trey is another guy to win in dominant fashion. Brown is a bit more consistent, but both are very fun to watch.

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It's just not a way people are supposed to lose at the pro level. He's just a freak of nature physically.

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That snatch of Hendrickson's helmet is just hilarious.

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The funniest part of that play to me was the end, where Brown flattened him the second time. It reminded me of my one and only fight with my big brother (9 years older than me). It was like, "Stay down, you fool, or I'll have to kick your butt again!

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I don't know how to frame the question, but thinking about Chiefs LTs reminded me of one of my dark horse least favorite Chiefs of yesteryear, Branden Albert. High draft pick, whiny, injured and penalty-prone for his alleged talent.

Please tell me Brown is better than Albert.

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I didn't mind Albert to be perfectly honest! He never quite developed into as a good a tackle as I would've hoped, but I think he was a little above average. That said, I didn't break down snaps the same way for him as I have for subsequent guys!

All that aside, I believe Brown to be the better player.

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