Thursday’s NFL draft is important to every team…
However, it’s particularly critical to the Kansas City Chiefs who badly need to add some weapons on offense. They have zero running game to speak of. Spencer Ware had a below average season. Tyreek Hill is a once in a while running back, and that’s about it.
The Chiefs running game was so bad on 3rd and 4th down short yardage last year that they went to QB Alex Smith for runs or pass to pick up the first down. Unfortunately, usually it failed.
So is running back their first pick, right?
Should they take controversial running back Joe Mixon?
Hey, it’s worked out thus far with for Hill and his issues. He hasn’t killed or beat up any women to date. And Hill was the Chiefs MVP no question. Without him the Chiefs wouldn’t have won the divisi and might not have made the playoffs. He had 12 TD’s and was All Pro.
Hill’s past was similar to Mixon’s – his beating up his pregnant girlfriend. But Mixon beat his up on video, not good.
Will KC dare to take another risk?
There are several other good backs out there, so my guess is no.
We all know Alex Smith is nearing the end of his NFL career in Kansas City.
Will KC look for his replacement?
Clemson quarterback Desean Watson might be available when the Chiefs take their first round pick. Will they go for him? Most think no.
Why?
Many NFL observers question Watson’s overall ability to win in the NFL.
His skill set seems to be there, but teams are not confident in his ability to get it done, and fast.
Lets face it, no No. 1 draft pick on quarterback over the last 10 years has been a smash hit in the league.
That kinda includes Andrew Luck, the Indy quarterback, who has yet to become an elite player. And lets not forget RG3. A long list of first round quarterbacks have failed. Most of the ones who have done well were picked in later rounds.
So what are the Chiefs likely to do?
Maybe a linebacker.
The Chiefs have had a long run of success over the years at that spot.
Derrick Thomas, Derrick Johnson, Tamba Hali, Justin Houston – to name a few.
Dee Ford had a better season last year, unfortunately he faded towards the end of the year.
Tamba is a spot player at best and Derrick Johnson is coming back from yet another injury and is 35, so the Chiefs can’t really count on him.
Justin Houston has been injured nearly the entire time since he signed a huge contract. Yes, he had one great game last year against Denver, but that was it. He may never be what he once was before he got hurt.
So linebacker is a big need today.
Chiefs can always use a top notch offensive lineman and help on the D line as well for pass defense. But that’s everyone in the league.
And let’s not forget wide receiver Jeremy Maclin who is either hurt or not playing at the needed level of a No.1 wide out.
My opinion is the Chiefs need get a top notch running back.
Somebody who can also catch and pick up that tough short yardage. One reason this team falls short seems to be on offense when it’s needed in the big games in the post season. Take our home loss to the Steelers.
The Chiefs have a tough schedule this coming fall:
New England, Dallas, Steelers, Giants plus our own division that includes Oakland and Denver.
Smith is the starting quarterback and he needs some help. We all know what Alex can and can’t do, so management needs to give him more weapons to win. Can they? Can he?
Let’s hope the Chiefs find a couple players in the draft who can step in and help right now.
Hey, it’s never easy!
Some will call you a pessimist CG, but your assessment of the swiss was spot on, to the chagrin red kool-aid drinkers everywhere.
“Chiefs have a tough schedule this coming fall”
– swiss are an 8-8 team 2017, give or take a game either way (9-7 /7-9); of course, will be no Superbowl for them and only a very small chance they even make post season. A tie for 3rd place AFC West 2017 with the Chargers the best swiss can hope for, 2017.
Kerouac doesn’t believe Alex Smith would be any more successful even were his WR’s Otis Taylor & Lance Alworth/Randy Moss & Terrell Owens. A QB (compared the NFL elite) who is ‘brown shoes in a tuxedo world’ comparison, isn’t the man who will lead KC to the Superbowl.. this alone renders moot a review swiss draft needs, but let’s lob some narrative grenades anyway, just for giggles.
_____________
Defense, they lost an starting DL and former Pro Bowl player in Poe, signed a free agent guy named Bennie Logan (who he?) to replace him, released another named Howard and have one more returning from injury/ir, Bailey… last year’s top draft choice Jones is a supposed pass-rush specialist who managed 2 sacks in 16 games. Free agent Logan (who he?) comes from PHIL, bringing 315 lbs. of appetite to the BBQ – er, to bear (and fewer tackles/assists than Poe 2016; that’s the good news.)
KC couldn’t stop the run in 2016, and now have a LB corp a year older which includes relics and injury prone starters: Johnson & Hali turn 35 & 34 this year. Another is less than a year shy 29 yet has seen more time off the field than on as in ‘Houston’ we have a problem. A couple of nobodies vie the other inside LB position next to Johnson, who can’t be counted on due another injury to his achilles tendon; a former #1 pick named Ford plays more like an Edsel than a Mustang, when he plays at all… barring an injury (he can only play Houston’s side with any aplomb), he is a backup player at best.
DB’s, boom or bust overhype ‘Toast’ Peters is the best of a CB group that has plenty of youth, inexperience & some injury history too. Overhype S Berry finally had a decent season – and it only took him 7 years to become what a #5 overall pick should’ve been from the start, 2010 (he still can’t cover 99 year old Chargers TE Antonio Gates, tho.) Other members the defensive backfield are adequate at best, while striking ‘fear’ into opposing receivers and offenses… said no one ever.
_____________
Offense otherwise, it is RB by committee and attrition: Ware wasn’t effective often in 2016… ditto for Charbroiled West his backup & the FB Sherman that they never used. Nile is gone, Charles too & the rest are camp bodies/fodder. Will draft one likely, but not likely day one.
The WR corp is mainly short on height & experience and has to use a gimmick/gadget player (Hill) interject anything at all in the way excitement into games. The latter guy is too short to ever excel at WR and too small to ever do the same RB… he ‘can’ return kicks and be a part of trickery offense, that’s about it. The rest include Maclin, Conley and Wilson who make up a thoroughly underwhelming average to below average unit.
At TE, the swiss boast a player who drops passes, fumbles the ball, shoves opposition players/draws penalties & still finds time to make obscene gesture afield, throw towel at official and mimick an guy in the troes gran mal seizure… what is known parlance as ‘a complete a..’- er, player; the backups are JAGs.
The OL is populated by fat guys who don’t run block especially well, but make up for it by drawing holding penalties at crucial moments & otherwise allowing KC QB’s much as 1 second (on a good day) pass the ball (unless Alice starts running round back there in circles and/or takes off even earlier, which he often does.)
Special teams: an overpriced P, an undersized return man and a K prone to raising his fingers toward the sky in self-adulation whenever ‘keecks a td’, rounds out an fabulous 2017 swiss roster as it stands today, less than a week before the draft.
__________
Likely #1 draft choice: barring trade, need would be DL, LB & RB, other positions CB & OL less so. In a year underwhelming QB prospects, swiss still feel obliged draft one high anyway because, well… aft Smith in the accension line it’s ‘Bray & Pray’ followed by Joel Stave (old man Stave’s boy), now on his third team in just this past year & his second stint the KC dis-organization. Upshot: swiss can’t afford a veteran backup QB as things stand, so Smith, Bray & a rookie draft choice it is, 2017.
Tomorrow’s news today: DL their first pick, LB the second and QB and RB to follow (or in reverse latter two, ‘which’ rounds subject swiss success in trading up via their excess of draft picks.) Final prediction: ‘Wait till next year!, Part 2018, Verse 49’
🙂
All that said, WHO KNOWS! I see the best teams in the AFC this way
New England
Steelers
Oakland
KC
Denver….hey sounds like last year huh….
Flip-flop KC and Oakland and I agree with you, CG.
“All that said, WHO KNOWS!”
– as ‘The Shadow’, ‘Kerouac’ knows… perfect again 2016 – Trump, fraudroyals, swiss and Falcons (cheatriots luck vs superior but errant SEAT and ATL teams NE’s last two Superbowl’s merely serves to affirm, that, as the rest modern pro football teams, NE is no more a Champion in any true sense the word than the rest the frauds have populated sports since 1969; such the sorry lot NFL, MLB, NBA as the rest circa century 21.) The 1960’s Packers never needed luck – they ‘earned’ their World Championships: no doubters 3 straight and 5 in 7 years… unmatched/best ever with no one else close.
“I see the best teams in the AFC this way
New England
Steelers
Oakland
KC
Denver….hey sounds like last year huh….”
– as always, injuries impact… surprises too: That said, OAK, PITT, DEN, NE, BAL and SD look top 6 AFC and the most likely post season contestants while MIA or another dark horse could surprise. Otherwise the usual suspects HOU, CIN and KC’s swiss the pretenders; some things never change… well, only the calendar: 17,272 days / 47+ years now since January 11, 1970)
The comedy 🙂
and
tragedy 🙁
be swiss chiefs football
K Green Bay was great, excellent but that was a different era, different game, players on the line were 225 not 325..these players today are bigger, stronger, faster and game plans are deeper and more on target today…its a new world out there K…so you can’t compare. Hey in baseball just 20 years ago several players were hitting 45 plus homers now nobody does, it all changes..
“K’
– yes, CG?
“Green Bay was great, excellent”
– the greatest and the most excellent ever…
“but”
– yes?
“that was a different era, different game, players on the line were 225 not 325”
– do some research: there were several players NFL/AFL over 300 lbs. in the 1960’s, yet, despite Green Bay being smaller, weaker & slower than KC and OAK Superbowl’s I and II, the Packers dominated both games, final score. Your claim, Chiefs and Raiders ‘should have’ dominated GB… neither did.
“players today are bigger, stronger, faster”
– … and therefore? 50 years ago 1967, Chiefs offensive & defensive lines were the biggest and the strongest in pro football. Yet, instead of KC dominating smaller, weaker opposition lineman, they didn’t even make post season.
Hmm, that doesn’t compute.
Q & A time:
Q: What current KC player is bigger and stronger than former Chief DT Ernie Ladd, 6’9 350 lbs. in his prime?
A: None
Q: What current KC/NFL player is taller/less vertically challenged than former 6’10 Chief TE Morris Stroud?
A: None; ‘Tree’ Stroud “couldn’t catch a cold” according a former teammate.
Q: What current KC/NFL player is faster than former Chief Jimmy Hines, 9.1 -100?
A: None; Hines lasted all of one game in KC.
Think KC current fast guy Hill is fast? Bob Hayes was the fastest player in the game 5o years ago – in fact, he was ‘the world’s fastest human’… he would still be the fastest player in today’s NFL; it took him and his team eight years to win a Championship.
“game plans are deeper and more on target today”
– sounds impressive… that statement and $129.99 gets someone an annual subscription the KC Star. Can you translate your point, CG? No; just so much lip service, translates to nothing.
“Hey in baseball just 20 years ago several players were hitting 45 plus homers now nobody does, it all changes.”
– hey, remember that chocolate’ jingle… ‘N-e-s-t-l-e-s:
‘Ste-roi-ds, medicinals make the very best, bogus stats’; except, they don’t. Same # of at bats, Babe Ruth hit 95 more home runs than Barry Bonds, yet, BB was bigger, stronger and faster. How does that happen, CG… why couldn’t Melonhead carry The Babe’s shoes as it were?
The errant belief size, strength and speed in and of itself makes players (and by extension teams) better, is an old argument; in reality it’s hooey which has been disproved severally… a check the sports record books affirms said.
🙂
Chiefs first round pick is a mystery right now, answer will come tonight…will it be a quarterback? A running back? Linebacker….all top needs….we will soon see…
My prediction is our first pick will be an inside linebacker we have none
Decisions decisions… if the swiss want to win ‘now’, they won’t draft a QB #1, but one of those other positions of need (DL, LB, RB or WR.)
Or, if they ‘do’ draft a QB #1, they might believe their window remains open, and they’ve enough time left to win with Smith (lol), but will hedge their bet by taking a QB with the hope he becomes an Dak Prescott type next year/2018, if not one ’17.
Worth a desperation shot one could argue, aft 47 years of woe and 34 years since last they took a chance at an QB #1, 1983’s choice of Blackledge.
This is where ‘luck’ comes into play, for no one (as in ‘all of the teams’ that passed on the likes Unitas, Starr, Montana, Marino, Brady and Warner, as well a few others) has a crystal ball.
Five minutes to blastoff…
To bullseyes Trump, fraudroyals, swiss chiefs & Falcons, Kerouac nails yet another!
Patrick Mahomes: the next swiss… BUST?
Time will tell…
Upside: weighing merits & demerits, this guy probably has the strongest arm the Chiefs have drafted in an QB since Pete Beathard in 1964. Alas, Pete’s career affirms that QB as team does not succeed by arm alone.
Downside: the guy needs a LOT of work. SLOPPY is the word. He looks like a street player, the antithesis a Len Dawson who had magnificent footwork.
Upshot: Hoping he’s the next Favre will be the optimists prayer, while realists will peg his ceiling ‘just a bit’ lower (think a poor man’s Favre: former NY Jet QB Browning Nagle.)
Kerouac’s prediction: barring injury, Mahomes will not start in KC until some point 2018 at earliest, sometime before that season ends & with it Smith’s contract/time in Kaycee comes to an end that same year.
Nod ‘Blood, Sweat & Tears’, swiss chiefs are gonna sink or swim having ‘gone down gamblin’.
🙂
K called it as did Bill Mass when I spoke to him on Thursday….a quarterback…named PAT!!! Number one pick. Chiefs.
Food for thot: ‘with a name like Smuckers it has to be good’… with a name like Pat he should’ve gone to New England, said the riposte to the ad line. Instead, Pat Mahomes becomes a Chief… time to jam, or yet another #1 piece of draft toast KC?
“Lets face it, no No. 1 draft pick on quarterback over the last 10 years has been a smash hit in the league.”
Cam Newton and Matt Ryan say hello.
Yes both have done well at times…Ryan for sure…he is a 9 year pro so yes I missed that one…Cam, jury is out, but he did get to a super bowl…