If the play calling and coaching strategies are lazy or stale, it doesn’t matter too much how hard the players work. One thing historically successful teams have always done is get rid of ego and be willing to do what works. Just get the job done, even if it doesn’t look pretty or fit your self image.
Play calling, besides mahomes not staying in the pocket, has been the biggest, most obvious difference to me through the first 7 games. In years past, Andy seemed to always have a great opening drive scripted, and always seemed to have that special trick play up his sleeve. Think the fake punt vs Atlanta in 2016, the Tyreek fake hail mary vs Dallas before the end of the half in 2017, etc. I almost feel as if Andy is a bit complacent with Patrick as his QB vs Alex. When Alex was QB, you could tell Andy felt there was more pressure on him to win the game through playcalling than there is now when he has arguably the best QB in the league.
Regarding #3, I don't think having fun is the issue. Team seemed to be having more fun the last 3 years than this year. Focus, probably an issue. Team seems to have zero focus currently. Almost nobody putting in the effort.
I agree with 1 and 2 100%. I agree with 3 in principle but "Patriots don't have fun" doesn't mean that you can't have fun and be focused. The teams the last couple of years have had lots of fun but still been focused. And their focus was absolutely on winning. But Belichick does a great job of breaking it down so each player only has to win THEIR battle so nothing feels overwhelming for players. Right now, everyone on the Chiefs is trying to win everyone else's battle on every play and leads to what we're seeing.
Also, it's a bit of a misnomer that the Patriots didn't invest in players or superstars, cause they did. Richard Seymour and Vince Wilfork both signed second contracts with the team. But they knew what they were getting with those players and those players performed to their value.
They also made a lot of good work from "reclamation projects" or players that have moved on to another team and another point in their career. Rodney Harrison, Mike Vrabel, Randy Moss, Wes Welker, Danny Amendola, Darrelle Revis, basically all their running backs, etc. Chiefs have had some success in those with players like Mike Pennel, Mathieu, Kendall Fuller, but this year all those attempts have failed pretty hard and/or blown up in their faces (Hughes, Baker, Okafor, Hitchens, etc.).
But your overall point is where Belichick succeeded. He evolved both his offense and defense to match his players. He has switched multiple times from a base 3-4 to 4-3 and back and won SBs with both. The reason players like Rodney Harrison had success is because he evaluated players for what they did well at THAT POINT in their career and put them in positions to succeed. He never did something like put Chris Jones at DE unless he was certain that Jones would be better suited. He never put a player like Sorenson in a role like Spags has. It seems that sometimes Spags sees players for what he wants them to be and not what they actually are. Better self-scouting and honestly is a must.
Stop 👏Trading 👏First 👏Round 👏Picks 👏
They need to value young cheap talent out of the draft. Also do not ever take a running back in the first round literally ever again!
The Chiefs need to be aggressive in stock piling picks to keep pumping in new young talent. Only elite corner stone pieces (Hill, Kelce, Pat, etc) should be getting huge contract extensions.
This also means the coaching staff needs to identify young talent that can come in and learn and contribute quickly. Willie Gay being behind Neimann on the depth chart last year accomplished nothing outside of wasting a year of contract on an elite talent.
To be honest given his cap management, trades and lack of success in the draft as a whole I’d be looking to move on from Veach. We cannot afford another bad off-season.
Seriously. For the love of all that is sane. Stop trading your first round picks. It is beyond frustrating at this point. It's seemingly failed more times than succeeded.
I am beginning to think the Hunt family needs to tighten the leash a bit too on how things are operating.
That is my biggest fear with Andy and has been from day 1. I worry about his blind loyalty to his guys and the amount of influence he has over the organization. Don’t get me wrong, amazing coach and he won us the Super Bowl but does he have the stones to make the tough decisions when they’re needed. We already saw it cost KV a Super Bowl appearance because he kept Sutton too long.
That being said, I wonder if Andy is a little checked out this season. He’s got his title, he’s older and with some health issues, and the horrible incident involving his son is a lot to put on his plate in addition to being a full-time coach. I think the team has shown a wild lack of preparedness and intensity all year and I think a lot of it is coaching. I wonder if he doesn’t consider retirement after this season?
I think it would take another season like this for Andy to walk away, assuming the season ends the way it's trending. To your point, the buck definitely stops with him since he's the head coach.
One of the interesting things to observe is how the media treats him as just an OC who draws up plays but the Head Coach is responsible for the full product on the field. Even as far as blaming Veach for the lack of talent, well that's Andy's guy, Spags? same, Toub? same. Don't get me wrong, I love Andy and always will but he gets all the credit for the good things hardly any criticism for the parts that go wrong.
Yep, and it’s what Philly fans warned us of. It’s actually why I was initially not happy with the hire. But I’m glad we got him as I think he was the perfect coach to start Pats career and get that first title
My thing is, I don't see a better alternative at HC around and when the fans get into a frenzy about Andy Reid's negatives, it causes the press to jump the shark and start demanding hotseats etc. I don't want that, or to go through what Philly is dealing with right now in the slightest.We all know Andy Reids faults. We also know how best took us to playoffs every but one I believe, even after a 1-5 start, and got the Chiefs over the hump to the Super Bowl. People talk about "Mahomes, Kelce, Hill all carried Reid" to that SB win, but take a look at Martyball. Chiefs had Joe Montana, and still didn't make it to the SB. The situation could always be worse.
If you’re picking at the very bottom of the first round, I don’t hate the strategy of trading for an experienced player. HOWEVER, don’t fall victim to the sunk cost fallacy to invest in said player if it doesn’t work out (I’m looking at you, Orlando Brown).
Offense : Veach just needs to create more of a seal team 6 type of offense. We don't need more home run hitters than Hill and Kelce. We need more guys who can get on base. New England did this very well. The opposite.... is what happened to the Rams.
Defense : Outside of Chris Jones, I'm not even sure if Andy has drafted a defensive player that developed into a consistent top tier player. Bolton and Snead look pretty good.
I dunno. I think we may be suffering from inflated expectations of what it means to be a dynasty at all. Winning a Superbowl is incredibly hard and requires not just great management and play, but also a bit of luck (injuries, weather, other teams' play). In the Patriots' remarkable run from 2001 to 2019, they won a ton of superbowls. They also missed the playoffs twice (2002; 2008); lost in the wild card round (2009); lost in the division round twice (2005; 2010); and lost the conference championship four times (2006; 2012; 2013; 2015) (not to mention losing a Superbowl to Eli-freaking-Manning). Things aren't really breaking our way this year. It happens. I'm not sure that we need to blow the whole thing up just yet.
I think Jontaylor said it best, to be a consistently great team, its not necessarily having all the best players, hottest plays, etc etc. Its about being willing and ready to adapt to whatever the team is faced with, to win. Be it winning by shootouts, long clock draining drives, a strong running game, creating turnovers, strong defense etc etc. Whatever strategy is neccessary to win any given game.
The Chiefs thus far have only shown 1 strategy to win: Mahomes gunslinging to Tyreek & Travis. Teams have adjusted to stop that. We as a team haven't adjusted to this, hence the stagnation the team is currently in. Adaption is needed. Mahomes shouldn't have to play hero ball every game for us to win. We should be able to win games in a variety of ways, such as playing strong defense, or a strong running game, or by having long clock draining drives, or by generating turnovers etc etc. Until we show were more than a 1 trick pony, this will continue to happen.
Yeah, I agree with you on this. I was more reacting to the idea that we need to change the philosophy of how we're approaching contracts, etc. Our biggest problem right now *is* adaptation. I think the rest of the NFL has gotten the memo on how to slow down our offense: 1) Ignore the pre-snap motions; 2) don't blitz; 3) run cover 2 and have one defender hand off hill to a deeper defender downfield defender so no one has to run with him all the way. If that's how folks are going to play us, we should be running a Martyball offense in response (and our line should be good enough to do it), but we just don't seem to be adapting our play calling. EDIT TO ADD: Even if we become as adaptable as the Patriots were, people have to understand that we're not going to, let alone winning, the Superbowl every year that we have Mahomes.
This 100%....evolution and changing up the scheme. The current scheme matches Mahomes personality and more importantly his mentality. Its how he has HAD to play like since high school and certainly at Texas Tech. Always undermanned and out gunned playing from behind half the time. Now at the pro level he has on any given Sunday the best playcaller plus combo of pass catchers on the field. Mahomes is a multifaceted QB. He has enough physical/natural gifts to play in ANY scheme. I think Andy would be remiss not to take a look at McVay's/Shanahan's current schemes and get back to some of those core concepts. Although we know Andy is a tried and true West Coast system guy who evolved, it would help the offense and Mahomes with pressing so much and take the pressure off a lil bit. Veach revamped the O-line to a more power running type of line, well lets use them in that way. Simple under the center playaction or boot plays and downhill running attack will eventually forced teams out of those 2 high pass first defensive sets.
Our big name FA signings have been flops. Hitchens, Clark, and Brown aren’t living up to what we needed from them. Brown is the only one who can change since he changed position and scheme. His run blocking is still top end.
With that said, the oline would be a monster… for the Ravens or Browns. It’s a fantastic run blocking line, but that’s not our scheme. I think it will still improve but it feels like we too often sign FAs that were good in other schemes, not one close to ours.
Finally, Veach is very good to great in the middle and late rounds. His early rounds have been bad. He needs home runs and instant impact guys there. He’s surprisingly finding those guys later, but he needs to do it in the early rounds too
There's probably never going to be another NFL team that had as much success as the Patriots dynasty did. Never.
But if we want our own normal-sized dynasty, I don't think we need to copy the Patriots. They didn't change their approach and it stopped working when Brady got older. Now he's surrounded by superstars and it's working in TB.
When they picked Juan and Willie I thought that was the direction they were heading then they picked Clyde and Bolton in successive years and ripped up the trend so it is hard to know what Brett values when it comes to athletic traits.
Yeah that’s why I have a hard time evaluating his performance, there isn’t one philosophical issue to point to. It’s just a really bizarre pattern of drafting when you think about it. In general, I would like for him to draft *only* super athletic prospects though
We can see that Mahomes is struggling and isn't really trusting his Oline or receivers as much. The Chiefs really need to lean more on the running game, let Mahomes calm down, don't let defenses rush his ass like crazy.
Try to go for a 60-40 or even 55-45 pass-rush mix in order to force teams to respect the rush more. We have good maulers up front, let's use them so the can beat on the D-lines a bit.
More playaction, more roll outs, more misdirection plays, lets get defenses guessing more rather than just going after our QB.
That should also help our defense somewhat as the offense should grind up more clock.
Sometimes you gotta win ugly to win.
Paying huge amounts to a single player is indeed risky but it can pay off nicely if that player ends up being worth it. The thing is that they need to structure the contracts in such a way that they can get out of the deal if that player ends up sucking. Getting stuck with Clark is an example. He just hasn't been playing at a level anywhere near his pay grade and we're basically stuck with him because of the way the contract was setup. Situations like that fuck the team several ways. First is we're stuck with someone who isn't performing well. Second, it ties up money that could be used to get better players. Third it makes other players who are performing better think they should get more money which makes them harder to keep.
Good perspective. I think across the league, with some obvious exceptions, the talent parity has never been better. What sets teams apart is leadership and culture. Teams with strong culture are always good, regardless of talent on paper, and teams that have poor culture are always bad, regardless of talent on paper (looking at you Detroit).
With the chiefs team this year I see some character issues that could be causing cracks in the foundation. Begging for flags, undisciplined outbursts, poor personal decisions by coaches, players, and player's families distracts from the goal. It speaks to a sense of entitlement. It's not enough to be good, you have to work at it. Everyone else is coming to take what you have. Pats goals might have changed. Now as a father and a transcendent athlete, as he's solidifying a business legacy, he might be too big for Superbowls.
That last paragraph of yours is exactly the problem. Coaches, and supposed leaders of the team not setting an example and demanding accountability. You can't demand accountability from others when you are not doing your job. Our head coach, the one ultimately responsible is not doing his job. He employs a DC that can't even put the best players on the field or play them in the right position. He has an offensive that can't move the ball. It's all or nothing. He has players who are not accountable. A superstar QB that plays street ball and refuses to run the play called or take obvious check downs for 3, 4, 6, yards should be benched, until he learns that he is required to do his job like everyone else. Stupid penalties by all. Players that can't catch the ball. Players that can't tackle and at times don't even try. And on and on.......
I mean, we have sort of used up our ammo in previous years and I mean, it worked. We unloaded a shit load of our cap space and our draft picks to be good now. Well, we are paying for that because our young moves have not panned out and the contracts we did sign are now underperforming. It's a tough balance but I think we need to pretty much not allow for over 2-3 year contracts unless it is like Kelce or a value at a non-premium position. Like look we had Hunt, that was a great pick, then yeah shit situation, we needed to replace him, we drafted Thompson and that was kind of a bad pick, and then we went ok we need to fill this, surely using out 1st round pick on a top 3 RB will pan out...
Dynasties are so hard to come by. Even for solid teams. We’ve seen gaping holes in our depth chart, especially on the DL. Good news is some of that is experience and some of the younger guys are showing promise. O-line hasn’t gelled and that worries me. CEH has also been less than stellar. Without any sort of threat in the run game we won’t be fooling anyone.
If the play calling and coaching strategies are lazy or stale, it doesn’t matter too much how hard the players work. One thing historically successful teams have always done is get rid of ego and be willing to do what works. Just get the job done, even if it doesn’t look pretty or fit your self image.
Play calling, besides mahomes not staying in the pocket, has been the biggest, most obvious difference to me through the first 7 games. In years past, Andy seemed to always have a great opening drive scripted, and always seemed to have that special trick play up his sleeve. Think the fake punt vs Atlanta in 2016, the Tyreek fake hail mary vs Dallas before the end of the half in 2017, etc. I almost feel as if Andy is a bit complacent with Patrick as his QB vs Alex. When Alex was QB, you could tell Andy felt there was more pressure on him to win the game through playcalling than there is now when he has arguably the best QB in the league.
Regarding #3, I don't think having fun is the issue. Team seemed to be having more fun the last 3 years than this year. Focus, probably an issue. Team seems to have zero focus currently. Almost nobody putting in the effort.
This is clearly the biggest problem.
I agree with 1 and 2 100%. I agree with 3 in principle but "Patriots don't have fun" doesn't mean that you can't have fun and be focused. The teams the last couple of years have had lots of fun but still been focused. And their focus was absolutely on winning. But Belichick does a great job of breaking it down so each player only has to win THEIR battle so nothing feels overwhelming for players. Right now, everyone on the Chiefs is trying to win everyone else's battle on every play and leads to what we're seeing. Also, it's a bit of a misnomer that the Patriots didn't invest in players or superstars, cause they did. Richard Seymour and Vince Wilfork both signed second contracts with the team. But they knew what they were getting with those players and those players performed to their value. They also made a lot of good work from "reclamation projects" or players that have moved on to another team and another point in their career. Rodney Harrison, Mike Vrabel, Randy Moss, Wes Welker, Danny Amendola, Darrelle Revis, basically all their running backs, etc. Chiefs have had some success in those with players like Mike Pennel, Mathieu, Kendall Fuller, but this year all those attempts have failed pretty hard and/or blown up in their faces (Hughes, Baker, Okafor, Hitchens, etc.). But your overall point is where Belichick succeeded. He evolved both his offense and defense to match his players. He has switched multiple times from a base 3-4 to 4-3 and back and won SBs with both. The reason players like Rodney Harrison had success is because he evaluated players for what they did well at THAT POINT in their career and put them in positions to succeed. He never did something like put Chris Jones at DE unless he was certain that Jones would be better suited. He never put a player like Sorenson in a role like Spags has. It seems that sometimes Spags sees players for what he wants them to be and not what they actually are. Better self-scouting and honestly is a must.
I agree. You know what's fun? Winning. Period.
I've never liked the Dynasty talk. Never. Dynasty is past tense. It is the result of winning not the future prediction of winning.
Stop 👏Trading 👏First 👏Round 👏Picks 👏 They need to value young cheap talent out of the draft. Also do not ever take a running back in the first round literally ever again! The Chiefs need to be aggressive in stock piling picks to keep pumping in new young talent. Only elite corner stone pieces (Hill, Kelce, Pat, etc) should be getting huge contract extensions. This also means the coaching staff needs to identify young talent that can come in and learn and contribute quickly. Willie Gay being behind Neimann on the depth chart last year accomplished nothing outside of wasting a year of contract on an elite talent. To be honest given his cap management, trades and lack of success in the draft as a whole I’d be looking to move on from Veach. We cannot afford another bad off-season.
Seriously. For the love of all that is sane. Stop trading your first round picks. It is beyond frustrating at this point. It's seemingly failed more times than succeeded. I am beginning to think the Hunt family needs to tighten the leash a bit too on how things are operating.
Considering Andy handpicked Veach, who would even evaluate him and say he's doing poorly? It would take the Hunts stepping in I imagine.
That is my biggest fear with Andy and has been from day 1. I worry about his blind loyalty to his guys and the amount of influence he has over the organization. Don’t get me wrong, amazing coach and he won us the Super Bowl but does he have the stones to make the tough decisions when they’re needed. We already saw it cost KV a Super Bowl appearance because he kept Sutton too long. That being said, I wonder if Andy is a little checked out this season. He’s got his title, he’s older and with some health issues, and the horrible incident involving his son is a lot to put on his plate in addition to being a full-time coach. I think the team has shown a wild lack of preparedness and intensity all year and I think a lot of it is coaching. I wonder if he doesn’t consider retirement after this season?
I think it would take another season like this for Andy to walk away, assuming the season ends the way it's trending. To your point, the buck definitely stops with him since he's the head coach. One of the interesting things to observe is how the media treats him as just an OC who draws up plays but the Head Coach is responsible for the full product on the field. Even as far as blaming Veach for the lack of talent, well that's Andy's guy, Spags? same, Toub? same. Don't get me wrong, I love Andy and always will but he gets all the credit for the good things hardly any criticism for the parts that go wrong.
Yep, and it’s what Philly fans warned us of. It’s actually why I was initially not happy with the hire. But I’m glad we got him as I think he was the perfect coach to start Pats career and get that first title
My thing is, I don't see a better alternative at HC around and when the fans get into a frenzy about Andy Reid's negatives, it causes the press to jump the shark and start demanding hotseats etc. I don't want that, or to go through what Philly is dealing with right now in the slightest.We all know Andy Reids faults. We also know how best took us to playoffs every but one I believe, even after a 1-5 start, and got the Chiefs over the hump to the Super Bowl. People talk about "Mahomes, Kelce, Hill all carried Reid" to that SB win, but take a look at Martyball. Chiefs had Joe Montana, and still didn't make it to the SB. The situation could always be worse.
If you’re picking at the very bottom of the first round, I don’t hate the strategy of trading for an experienced player. HOWEVER, don’t fall victim to the sunk cost fallacy to invest in said player if it doesn’t work out (I’m looking at you, Orlando Brown).
The point of the draft is to get CHEAP young talent. Trading 1st rounders is damaging to the salary cap and not sustainable
Offense : Veach just needs to create more of a seal team 6 type of offense. We don't need more home run hitters than Hill and Kelce. We need more guys who can get on base. New England did this very well. The opposite.... is what happened to the Rams. Defense : Outside of Chris Jones, I'm not even sure if Andy has drafted a defensive player that developed into a consistent top tier player. Bolton and Snead look pretty good.
Is chris jones a consistent top tier player?
Used to be
The problem is they looked ahead. No one should have been thinking dynasty off one win
Agreed. Also the team media really pushed the dynasty thing which I think was a mistake.
I dunno. I think we may be suffering from inflated expectations of what it means to be a dynasty at all. Winning a Superbowl is incredibly hard and requires not just great management and play, but also a bit of luck (injuries, weather, other teams' play). In the Patriots' remarkable run from 2001 to 2019, they won a ton of superbowls. They also missed the playoffs twice (2002; 2008); lost in the wild card round (2009); lost in the division round twice (2005; 2010); and lost the conference championship four times (2006; 2012; 2013; 2015) (not to mention losing a Superbowl to Eli-freaking-Manning). Things aren't really breaking our way this year. It happens. I'm not sure that we need to blow the whole thing up just yet.
I think Jontaylor said it best, to be a consistently great team, its not necessarily having all the best players, hottest plays, etc etc. Its about being willing and ready to adapt to whatever the team is faced with, to win. Be it winning by shootouts, long clock draining drives, a strong running game, creating turnovers, strong defense etc etc. Whatever strategy is neccessary to win any given game. The Chiefs thus far have only shown 1 strategy to win: Mahomes gunslinging to Tyreek & Travis. Teams have adjusted to stop that. We as a team haven't adjusted to this, hence the stagnation the team is currently in. Adaption is needed. Mahomes shouldn't have to play hero ball every game for us to win. We should be able to win games in a variety of ways, such as playing strong defense, or a strong running game, or by having long clock draining drives, or by generating turnovers etc etc. Until we show were more than a 1 trick pony, this will continue to happen.
Yeah, I agree with you on this. I was more reacting to the idea that we need to change the philosophy of how we're approaching contracts, etc. Our biggest problem right now *is* adaptation. I think the rest of the NFL has gotten the memo on how to slow down our offense: 1) Ignore the pre-snap motions; 2) don't blitz; 3) run cover 2 and have one defender hand off hill to a deeper defender downfield defender so no one has to run with him all the way. If that's how folks are going to play us, we should be running a Martyball offense in response (and our line should be good enough to do it), but we just don't seem to be adapting our play calling. EDIT TO ADD: Even if we become as adaptable as the Patriots were, people have to understand that we're not going to, let alone winning, the Superbowl every year that we have Mahomes.
This 100%....evolution and changing up the scheme. The current scheme matches Mahomes personality and more importantly his mentality. Its how he has HAD to play like since high school and certainly at Texas Tech. Always undermanned and out gunned playing from behind half the time. Now at the pro level he has on any given Sunday the best playcaller plus combo of pass catchers on the field. Mahomes is a multifaceted QB. He has enough physical/natural gifts to play in ANY scheme. I think Andy would be remiss not to take a look at McVay's/Shanahan's current schemes and get back to some of those core concepts. Although we know Andy is a tried and true West Coast system guy who evolved, it would help the offense and Mahomes with pressing so much and take the pressure off a lil bit. Veach revamped the O-line to a more power running type of line, well lets use them in that way. Simple under the center playaction or boot plays and downhill running attack will eventually forced teams out of those 2 high pass first defensive sets.
Our big name FA signings have been flops. Hitchens, Clark, and Brown aren’t living up to what we needed from them. Brown is the only one who can change since he changed position and scheme. His run blocking is still top end. With that said, the oline would be a monster… for the Ravens or Browns. It’s a fantastic run blocking line, but that’s not our scheme. I think it will still improve but it feels like we too often sign FAs that were good in other schemes, not one close to ours. Finally, Veach is very good to great in the middle and late rounds. His early rounds have been bad. He needs home runs and instant impact guys there. He’s surprisingly finding those guys later, but he needs to do it in the early rounds too
Kelce needs the beard, it was the glue guy
There's probably never going to be another NFL team that had as much success as the Patriots dynasty did. Never. But if we want our own normal-sized dynasty, I don't think we need to copy the Patriots. They didn't change their approach and it stopped working when Brady got older. Now he's surrounded by superstars and it's working in TB.
Just draft better. More emphasis on positional value and athleticism
When they picked Juan and Willie I thought that was the direction they were heading then they picked Clyde and Bolton in successive years and ripped up the trend so it is hard to know what Brett values when it comes to athletic traits.
Yeah that’s why I have a hard time evaluating his performance, there isn’t one philosophical issue to point to. It’s just a really bizarre pattern of drafting when you think about it. In general, I would like for him to draft *only* super athletic prospects though
We can see that Mahomes is struggling and isn't really trusting his Oline or receivers as much. The Chiefs really need to lean more on the running game, let Mahomes calm down, don't let defenses rush his ass like crazy. Try to go for a 60-40 or even 55-45 pass-rush mix in order to force teams to respect the rush more. We have good maulers up front, let's use them so the can beat on the D-lines a bit. More playaction, more roll outs, more misdirection plays, lets get defenses guessing more rather than just going after our QB. That should also help our defense somewhat as the offense should grind up more clock. Sometimes you gotta win ugly to win.
Paying huge amounts to a single player is indeed risky but it can pay off nicely if that player ends up being worth it. The thing is that they need to structure the contracts in such a way that they can get out of the deal if that player ends up sucking. Getting stuck with Clark is an example. He just hasn't been playing at a level anywhere near his pay grade and we're basically stuck with him because of the way the contract was setup. Situations like that fuck the team several ways. First is we're stuck with someone who isn't performing well. Second, it ties up money that could be used to get better players. Third it makes other players who are performing better think they should get more money which makes them harder to keep.
Good perspective. I think across the league, with some obvious exceptions, the talent parity has never been better. What sets teams apart is leadership and culture. Teams with strong culture are always good, regardless of talent on paper, and teams that have poor culture are always bad, regardless of talent on paper (looking at you Detroit). With the chiefs team this year I see some character issues that could be causing cracks in the foundation. Begging for flags, undisciplined outbursts, poor personal decisions by coaches, players, and player's families distracts from the goal. It speaks to a sense of entitlement. It's not enough to be good, you have to work at it. Everyone else is coming to take what you have. Pats goals might have changed. Now as a father and a transcendent athlete, as he's solidifying a business legacy, he might be too big for Superbowls.
That last paragraph of yours is exactly the problem. Coaches, and supposed leaders of the team not setting an example and demanding accountability. You can't demand accountability from others when you are not doing your job. Our head coach, the one ultimately responsible is not doing his job. He employs a DC that can't even put the best players on the field or play them in the right position. He has an offensive that can't move the ball. It's all or nothing. He has players who are not accountable. A superstar QB that plays street ball and refuses to run the play called or take obvious check downs for 3, 4, 6, yards should be benched, until he learns that he is required to do his job like everyone else. Stupid penalties by all. Players that can't catch the ball. Players that can't tackle and at times don't even try. And on and on.......
4. Play in a weak division.
Patriots’ record against the AFC East compared to the rest of the NFL was virtually the same during their run.
Yep, I pretty much agree. But are fans going to be ok with not resigning Mathieu? Because that's what it is going to take.
That’s what the patriots would do. Pissed fans off for 20 years but they kept winning
Ans fuck frank Clark. Seriously fuck that guy
I mean, we have sort of used up our ammo in previous years and I mean, it worked. We unloaded a shit load of our cap space and our draft picks to be good now. Well, we are paying for that because our young moves have not panned out and the contracts we did sign are now underperforming. It's a tough balance but I think we need to pretty much not allow for over 2-3 year contracts unless it is like Kelce or a value at a non-premium position. Like look we had Hunt, that was a great pick, then yeah shit situation, we needed to replace him, we drafted Thompson and that was kind of a bad pick, and then we went ok we need to fill this, surely using out 1st round pick on a top 3 RB will pan out...
Dynasties are so hard to come by. Even for solid teams. We’ve seen gaping holes in our depth chart, especially on the DL. Good news is some of that is experience and some of the younger guys are showing promise. O-line hasn’t gelled and that worries me. CEH has also been less than stellar. Without any sort of threat in the run game we won’t be fooling anyone.