Rebuilding the OL

[RedGold]

1 minute ago, kingseanjohn said:

As @samsel23hinted at, our current OL in 2022 only has four guys under contract total. Thuney, Allegretti, Niang, and Durant. If we get Darrisaw, he'd be five. But we can get someone else to play LT without trading up and still have a 3rd-4th + next years 1st to add help at another position on a rookie deal.

 

And that’s if Allegretti and Durant even make the 53/we slide them through on PS.   Cuz right now the OL group is pretty packed on depth. 
Thuney- Long Term
Niang - Long Term
Remmers - 1 year
LDT - 1 year
Long - 1 year
Blythe - 1 Year
Wylie - 1 Year
Rankin - 1 year
Alegretti - 2 year
Durant- 2 year
PTW- 2 year.  
 

I’d say our 3-7 guys are all on 1 year deals and than it just gets into the numbers crunch on how many you want to push on the 53.

[mayanfootball]

15 hours ago, samsel23 said:

OL would most likely still be a need next year even with Darrisaw,  most of our current guys are all on 1 year deals.   Sure we could bring some of them back,  but again that kind of falls in line with how much we are paying the top of our roster.  

We'll/Veach will deal with it. But Darrisaw will sign long term. And that's the most important position on the Oline. And you won't have to pay a #1 for 2022. We're saving money!! (LOL)

Edited April 10, 2021 by mayanfootball

[mayanfootball]

15 hours ago, kingseanjohn said:

Hitchens(12.7mil),

Lose this underperformer. We just saved that much.

Edited April 10, 2021 by mayanfootball

[mayanfootball]

15 hours ago, samsel23 said:

The odds of hitting on a guy at all those positions are very low in one draft,   especially for Veach (who has been an average drafter, sans last year).  

But it can be done. Many guys are putting out decent drafts in the draft simulation section

 

Edited April 10, 2021 by mayanfootball

[mayanfootball]

15 hours ago, kingseanjohn said:

Mahomes(47mil),

This is the elephant in the room. Pay the man his money. He's NFL's best. But don't whine that you can't pay the rest of the team. You can. Many players would love to play in Kansas City, to have a chance at a Super Bowl ring. You won't get better odds with any other city/team.

Players will give us a "home discount" to play here. KC is like no other place in the NFL. We're blessed. Seeing how we got blown up last super bowl is just the incentive needed to fix things for down the road. But it starts and ends with protecting Patrick Mahomes.

Edited April 10, 2021 by mayanfootball

[RedGold]

28 minutes ago, mayanfootball said:

But it can be done. Many guys are putting out decent drafts in the draft simulation section

And a year from now a lot of those won’t look as decent.   Just drafting a decent deal prospect at each spot is easy,  a lot still won’t turn out.  

[mayanfootball]

2 hours ago, samsel23 said:

And a year from now a lot of those won’t look as decent.   Just drafting a decent deal prospect at each spot is easy,  a lot still won’t turn out.  

"You're messing with my Zen thing, man." (Tron: Legacy) 

"Do or Do not" (Yoda)

Edited April 10, 2021 by mayanfootball

[mayanfootball]

And to those who  want to trade down and get more picks? How are you going to pay those extra players with a tight cap??

We need great/good players, not more.

 

[Jakuvious]

18 hours ago, kingseanjohn said:

What would be cheaper, two 1st round pick players or Darrisaw around 10ish and signing a vet?

We've seen the contracts that Veach likes to hand out. It's likely a one year deal or overpaying for multiple years.

We've all discussed the Watkins, Hitchens, and Clark deals to death. But Joe Thuney? He's a good player. But is a 29 year old OG worth five years at 16mil/year? Sure, it's only a 4mil cap hit this year. But next year its 17.8 then 18.9. The last two years are 19.9 each and have a potential out. But that'll come with a ~7mil dead cap hit. I can't imagine us not cutting him for cap relief.

To put it in another perspective: Next year we are currently on track to have ~18mil in cap space. We have 23 players under contract. It takes 53 to field a team. 18mil between 30 players doesn't go very far. Sure, moves will be made and other guys will get cut. But it's making the problem worse by kicking the can down the road. We have to get cheaper and way less top heavy in contracts. You do that by drafting well and developing talent.

Take a peek for yourself at the future cap if you're interested: Spotrac

Sorry, I'm starting a Veach contract/cap rant again.

Just a couple notes on the cap projection, here. That $18M figure assumes a roughly $192M salary cap next year. That would be about a 3% decrease over 2020. Sportrac only has that as the estimate as it bases it off of a growth percentage of the current cap. But with the TV deals rumored to be massive, and with the likelihood of teams pushing for full stadiums by September, and the 17th game, and the extra playoff game, there is absolutely no way the salary cap in 2022 is lower than it was in 2020. It won't happen. So we will have more than $18M in cap space. Even if we don't carry any over and don't make any room actively, we will have more than that.

Additionally, that 23 number is not nearly as concerning as it seems. Average is probably about 30, looking around the league. And teams with more just have more guys making that bottom of the barrel sub-$1M. Sure, the Bills have 40 guys under roster in 2022, but that's just because they have 10 more guys no one knows the name of already signed to the back end of the roster. This is about the worst time to try to pull what teams have under contract a year and a half out. Between now and the 2022 roster taking the field, you have two full drafts, one and a half free agency periods, you have about 20 RFAs with options that we can't exercise until next offseason, etc. The back half of the roster is always full of draft picks, RFAs, cheap one year vets, developmental depth, etc. Most of those spots will be cheap, young, and filled naturally. Of our long free agent list next offseason, you have only 2 guys making meaningful money (Mathieu and Reed.) You have 5 more topping $2M. Everyone else is vet min guys, RFAs, one year deals on developmental guys, or depth that you're fine if they outprice you somehow (guys like Niemann, Robinson, Bell, Keizer, D Williams, Watts, etc.)

It isn't like we have a ton of guys we need to manage to resign next year, and no money to do it with. You'd like to see extensions for Mathieu and Hill. I'd like to bring back Sorensen, Ward, Pringle, and Nnadi. But that's really not much of a to do list internally.

 

More of a sidenote, than my main argument, but I'm also fine with the Thuney deal. It's been a little while since we've seen an elite G sign a new deal, but I think in the end what we gave him will slot in nicely between what Zach Martin got 2 years back, and what Quinton Nelson winds up getting next year. I would absolutely rather have an elite LT, if it came down to it, but the nice thing with a guy of Thuney's quality is how much easier it will make it for the guys around him. I fully believe that how we've built our line under Reid, is we try to have a few true lynchpins on the OL to enable lighter investment at the other spots. It worked quite well when we had Fish, Hudson/Morse, and Schwartz. We could plug in anyone at the G spots and it wouldn't sink because they were flanked by the more reliable guys. And it fell apart once the interior became something like Allegretti/Reiter/Wylie, as you had a huge 3 man wide weakpoint. It's why we can't run and why Mahomes starts bailing all the time. Schwartz and Fish, even when healthy, couldn't hold that together. Thuney is that same kind of guy Hudson was or Schwartz was, where his presence is going to make it easier for the LT and C to succeed. Fewer concerns about miscommunications at those spots. Stunts will be handled reliably. He'll read properly who to help if he's not 1 on 1 against a 4 man rush. If we wind up having a line of rookie/Thuney/Blythe/LDT/Niang, Thuney will make the rookie and Blythe look better than they are. Just becomes a question of how LDT and Niang return, then.

[onejayhawk]

As Samsel pointed out, most of the OL is on one year contracts, even LDT. Exceptions are the rookie contracts and Thuney. A year from now we could be looking at Thuney, Niang, Allegretti, Durant, maybe PTW as the only returning OL players. 

J

Edited April 10, 2021 by onejayhawk

[RedGold]

3 hours ago, mayanfootball said:

And to those who  want to trade down and get more picks? How are you going to pay those extra players with a tight cap??

We need great/good players, not more.

 

I’m good with not trading down.   Pick wise we are fine.    I think trading up is dumb with how many short contracts we have, along with our future cap space.  

Anything below a 3rd Round selection(really a 2nd).  Is going to count less against the cap than most Vet Min. Deals.   

I mean Lucas Niang cost $871,768 against the cap.  As a 3rd rounder from last year.   Any veteran past 3 years is going to earn more than that.    Having too many picks will never cause a cap issue,   Trading away picks and sticking with veterans adds up piece by piece.   
 

We have a ton of top players,   We lack in depth.   Part of that is prior to last year our drafts really haven’t been good,  another part is since we have so many top players,   We had to pay them.   Eventually if you can’t draft well,  and the top of your roster is loaded on cap..  your depth is going to suffer since it’s costly to have veterans as depth.  

[kingseanjohn]

9 hours ago, mayanfootball said:

This is the elephant in the room. Pay the man his money. He's NFL's best. But don't whine that you can't pay the rest of the team. You can. Many players would love to play in Kansas City, to have a chance at a Super Bowl ring. You won't get better odds with any other city/team.

Players will give us a "home discount" to play here. KC is like no other place in the NFL. We're blessed. Seeing how we got blown up last super bowl is just the incentive needed to fix things for down the road. But it starts and ends with protecting Patrick Mahomes.

I keep hearing this, but so far it hasn't been the case at all.

[kingseanjohn]

7 hours ago, Jakuvious said:

So we will have more than $18M in cap space.

I agree with your thoughts and reasoning here. But right now, this is what we have to work with. Until it happens, I'm not going to count on it.

7 hours ago, Jakuvious said:

Additionally, that 23 number is not nearly as concerning as it seems. Average is probably about 30, looking around the league.

There are 1,033 players under contract league wide in 2022, for an average of 32 per team; so 30 is a pretty close guess. You mentioned the Bills. But they aren't the only ones around 40. Jags(46), Dolphins(45), Browns(45), Bills(41), Giants(41), Pats(38), Vikings(38), Rams(38), +4 teams with 35...

The teams with less than 30, least to most: Falcons(22), Chiefs(23), Lions(24), 49ers, Bears, Raiders, Colts, Broncos, Steelers, Saints, WFT, and Bengals(29).

The Chiefs, as of today, have the 13th least cap space in 2022. Conversely, the top 8 teams in cap space are the Colts, Steelers, Jets, Broncos, Chargers, Bengals, WFT, and Raiders -- with the Chargers have exactly 30 under contract.

7 hours ago, Jakuvious said:

It's why we can't run and why Mahomes starts bailing all the time.

I'd argue we can't run because Andy reverted to his former self and quit running the ball; except the Texans and Bills games. The team averaged 4.5ypc on the year. After CEH had 26 carries for 161yds againt the Bills, he only had 8, 6, and 5 carries the next three weeks. In the 13 games he played, he only rushed more than 10 times in 8 games.

[RedGold]

30 minutes ago, kingseanjohn said:

I keep hearing this, but so far it hasn't been the case at all.

Yeah,  I think everyone just assumes this.  But it hasn’t really happened.  In all reality,  I get the sense that a lot of guys around the league  can’t stand how cocky the KC offense is.  

[Jakuvious]

1 hour ago, kingseanjohn said:

I'd argue we can't run because Andy reverted to his former self and quit running the ball; except the Texans and Bills games. The team averaged 4.5ypc on the year. After CEH had 26 carries for 161yds againt the Bills, he only had 8, 6, and 5 carries the next three weeks. In the 13 games he played, he only rushed more than 10 times in 8 games.

I mean, two of those games were steamrolls, so we gave more carries to Bell/Washington/Williams/Thompson. Against Carolina, the backs had 9 carries for 22 yards, so it's not like we gave up on some successful thing there.

Our RBs actually averaged 4.2 ypc on the year, for what it's worth. The average will always be inflated a bit by Mahomes and Hill. And then that argument winds up getting kind of circular anyways, because part of the efficiency is that we don't run much, so teams don't expect it. Run more, they defend it more, efficiency goes back down.

But, I'm not talking statistically here, anyway. You watch the interior line last year, and it's clear, short of like a week or two where Allegretti and Kilgore owned, that none of them were competent run blockers when we tried to just run CEH on normal NFL running plays.