Chiefs rookie class -- in their own words

[brdempsey69]

Video of the Chiefs rookies talking about being selected by KC.

http://www.chiefs.com/media-center/videos/The-2017-Draft-Class-in-Their-Own-Words/32104ebc-9fde-4ea7-8d7a-4795c4dbeb85

The upcoming season will be interesting to see what they can do.

[ctchiefsfan]

GREAT stuff Demps!

[brdempsey69]

Thanks, CTC. I know that on paper the Chiefs 2017 draft class may not look spectacular on paper, but closer inspection reveals that there is some HUGE upside to the top 4 players that were taken. Although, as far as making an instant splash, the most likely candidate is the RB, Kareem Hunt (and the Chiefs sorely need an upgraded rushing attack this year, no two ways about it.)

[Chiefs4life24]

Tanoh will make an instant impact, actually they all will make an impact my bet is the Safety moves from Safety to the Slot and allows Nelson to cover the outside with Peters where Nelson is better anyways

[brdempsey69]

Tanoh will make an instant impact, actually they all will make an impact my bet is the Safety moves from Safety to the Slot and allows Nelson to cover the outside with Peters where Nelson is better anyways

McQuay is said to be working at the slot CB position. Tanoh is said to be working in the same manner as Hali, which is understandable, because even at 6'-7" and 290 lbs., he runs a 4.8 in forty yard dash, which is pretty fast for a man of his size.

BTW, CTC, Marvin H is back at Arrowhead Addict talking his usual dumb trash about how good his Donkeys are. We'll see when the season comes around.

[ctchiefsfan]

Thanks, CTC. I know that on paper the Chiefs 2017 draft class may not look spectacular on paper, but closer inspection reveals that there is some HUGE upside to the top 4 players that were taken. Although, as far as making an instant splash, the most likely candidate is the RB, Kareem Hunt (and the Chiefs sorely need an upgraded rushing attack this year, no two ways about it.)

If there is one thing we have all probably learned by now it is that our coaching staff is pretty adept at taking players who have not been especially respected (either in the draft or with other teams) and transforming them not to stars but into solid starters or backups. Ron Parker, Spencer Ware and Charcandrick West come quickly to mind but I'm sure there are several others. So I don't much concern myself with how a player looks "on paper". The big question on how a new prospect for the Chiefs seems to turn out is how they "buy into" the coaching methods they are being exposed to. If they "buy in" 100% and work hard they seem to become decent contributors even when other teams have given them multiple chances and decided that they simply didn't have what it takes.

[brdempsey69]

Hey CTC, C4L, and anyone else for that matter -- it may have surprised us that the Chiefs did trade up like they did to #10 to take Mahomes. However, I came across this .gif image and saw this play today, for the 1st time.

THIS is totally mind-blowing!!

I'm sorry, but there is only one person to blame for this play being a failure -- Alex Smith. He only needs to do the one thing that he is paid to do -- throw the damn football !! He is looking in Tyreek Hill's direction & there is NO WAY possible that Smith shouldn't see that the Pittsburgh Safety isn't even backpedaling & Hill is racing by him. All Smith has to do is throw it out there & if Hill makes the catch, it is SIX points. Instead, Smith bails when he doesn't have to. All he has to do is step up and throw. The protection was good.

They needed something like 17 yards to pick up a 1st down on that play, so quite naturally, with Hill running a deep route, Smith should have been looking to him first.

THIS is the real reason the Chiefs lost that playoff game to Pissburgh's Little Tin Cods, because of missed opportunities, such as this.

So for anyone mystified about why the Chiefs traded up to take Mahomes, simply view the .gif image below and there is your answer.



http://www.brdempsey69.com/chiefs/booboo.gif

[Eydugstr]

Brd, that makes a really good case. Moments like those are painful to watch.

Personally I don't get why folks are up in the air about drafting Mahomes or a QB in general. We knew it was coming, Alex was not getting any younger, his contract is winding down and to me he didn't look the same after he got hit last year. All those hits add up and will lead to moments like those, where he didn't catch the defender planting his feet against Tyreek Hill.

[brdempsey69]

Brd, that makes a really good case. Moments like those are painful to watch.

Personally I don't get why folks are up in the air about drafting Mahomes or a QB in general. We knew it was coming, Alex was not getting any younger, his contract is winding down and to me he didn't look the same after he got hit last year. All those hits add up and will lead to moments like those, where he didn't catch the defender planting his feet against Tyreek Hill.

It does make a great case & I'm not bashing Alex. I'm just illustrating what is keeping him from being a GREAT QB. How many more moments were there throughout the season that were like this? I read somewhere that Maclin had also sifted free on another play & Smith didn't get him the ball.

I believe you are right, Dougster, that the hit in the Indy game took a toll on him. How many more hits to the head can he take? Speculation, of course, but another factor in Dorsey/Reid going after Mahomes is that they'd prefer to see Alex walk away from the game, not get carried away on a damn stretcher (and that could have been the case with Charles, as well).

[ctchiefsfan]

Hey CTC, C4L, and anyone else for that matter -- it may have surprised us that the Chiefs did trade up like they did to #10 to take Mahomes. However, I came across this .gif image and saw this play today, for the 1st time.

THIS is totally mind-blowing!!

I'm sorry, but there is only one person to blame for this play being a failure -- Alex Smith. He only needs to do the one thing that he is paid to do -- throw the damn football !! He is looking in Tyreek Hill's direction & there is NO WAY possible that Smith shouldn't see that the Pittsburgh Safety isn't even backpedaling & Hill is racing by him. All Smith has to do is throw it out there & if Hill makes the catch, it is SIX points. Instead, Smith bails when he doesn't have to. All he has to do is step up and throw. The protection was good.

They needed something like 17 yards to pick up a 1st down on that play, so quite naturally, with Hill running a deep route, Smith should have been looking to him first.

THIS is the real reason the Chiefs lost that playoff game to Pissburgh's Little Tin Cods, because of missed opportunities, such as this.

So for anyone mystified about why the Chiefs traded up to take Mahomes, simply view the .gif image below and there is your answer.



http://www.brdempsey69.com/chiefs/booboo.gif


That was somewhere between extremely painful and heartbreaking to watch. It may haunt me in my sleep for many years. NOBODY within 5 yards (cant see what there was more than 5 yards in front of Hill). If there was nobody in front of him that was a mortal lock for 6 'cause there was nobody within 10 yards behind him. NOBODY was going to catch him from behind.

I LIKE Alex! I really do! How could I not like the QB we have had when we went from 2-14 to 11-5, 9-7, 11-5, 12-4? He is a VERY GOOD QB. If you can believe what you read, Reid had had his eye on Alex since Alex was in college. Alex was the PERFECT QB for Reid to bring in for a team that was just plain broken. Alex's 4 best years have ALL been with the Chiefs. Reid and his offensive scheme was the PERFECT combination of coach and offensive scheme for Alex. And the perfect combination to IMMEDIATELY save our Chiefs from from a VERY BAD situation (suicides...airplanes over the stadium etc).

Let's face it. If Alex was 26 we wouldn't have traded up for Mahomes. But Alex is 33. There shouldn't be much "ceiling" left for him. In other words, "what we've seen is most likely what we get." Has Alex got 4 or 5 more years in him? HELL YES! He's not "old". Remember, we got Montana when he was 37. But unless the arrival of Mahomes lights a roaring fire under Alex's butt his chances of getting us to a Super Bowl aren't getting any better...RIGHT?

As usual, I talk too much but Reid had to accept that if we just carried on with Alex we were going to go on like we have the last 4 years. "Very good, but probably not good enough". Not so long ago I (and probably most people reading this) longed for the Marty years. But Reid SPOILED US! We believe again and now we want MORE than just playoff appearances. Now we want playoff wins, AFC West Championships, an appearance at the AFC Championship and a damned good sniff at a Super Bowl appearance. Reid has simply "raised the bar" on what we expect. I thank him.

So WE HAD NO CHOICE but to get a QB that had the "upside potential" to become GREAT! Can Mahomes do it? I dunno, but I'm glad Reid and Dorsey decided to take that risk. Hopefully the pressure from Mahomes will prod Alex into having 2 years that blow all his previous years away! It would be REALLY GREAT for Alex to hand Mahomes a team that had just won the Super Bowl and retire as a Super Bowl winner or become a #2 that we knew could win us another Super Bowl if Mahomes went down.

Mahomes wasn't what I wanted in the draft but "upon further review" I think it was the right decision.

[brdempsey69]

If you watch this play from 2015, then it makes what you see in the .gif image I posted above even more mind-boggling. On this play, Alex's execution is FLAWLESS. He looks to the left and freezes the Donkey Safety and then comes back to the right & delivers a perfect pass to the RB West and the result is an 80-yard TD that nails the coffin shut on the Donkeys. I'm sure CTC, that like myself, many believe this is probably the best play of Alex's career.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pORYXVduH4s

[ctchiefsfan]

Demps....I remember that play. Had forgotten it was West who made the catch. What I had especially remembered about that play was Maclin's block that insured West got across the goal line. But looking at it now it's really an example of a QB executing to perfection. That play should certainly be prominent in an Alex Smith Career Highlights video. West got free on his own, but it was Alex's look left that broke the play open for huge yards. That look left faked the donkey defender out of his cleats. The killer is it's a similar play to the one in the gif you posted from the Pittsburgh game. All I can ask myself is what was different in Alex's head in the Pittsburgh game that he wasn't able to replicate the pass to West? Perhaps what bugs me the most is that in the gif from the Steelers game Alex takes off running before he is under any real pressure. All he had to do is look quickly to his left before breaking out of the pocket.

[brdempsey69]

^^The thing that you notice in the .gif image, CTC, is that Alex is already looking in the direction of Hill and the Pittsburgh Safety standing flat-footed, as soon as Alex gets the snap. You notice Hill starts looking back for the ball before he crosses the 30-yard line, because he knows he's got the entire Defense beaten. All Alex had to do was throw it out there.

I believe Dougster nailed it. That hit to the head in the Indy game & he wasn't the same afterwards. Andy Reid said that Alex isn't getting any younger & as I said before, how many more hits to the head can he take? It doesn't matter who the QB is. You can't take shots to the head like that repeatedly.

[Eydugstr]

It does make a great case & I'm not bashing Alex. I'm just illustrating what is keeping him from being a GREAT QB. How many more moments were there throughout the season that were like this? I read somewhere that Maclin had also sifted free on another play & Smith didn't get him the ball.

I believe you are right, Dougster, that the hit in the Indy game took a toll on him. How many more hits to the head can he take? Speculation, of course, but another factor in Dorsey/Reid going after Mahomes is that they'd prefer to see Alex walk away from the game, not get carried away on a damn stretcher (and that could have been the case with Charles, as well).

Definitely. Alex still does have a shot at getting it done in KC. Alex has done an amazing job picking up Reid's offense and making us competitive from word go. It's four years later...He's still helping us stay competitve, he was a big part of the playoff win against Houston, and we need him to keep things that way until Mahomes is ready. Regardless of how it turns out, would like to see the man WALK his way to wherever he wants to go when he hangs up his cleats.

With JC it's a little different story because Spencer Ware, Knile Davis and CW were already doing his job for the past two years. It put the front office in a situation where it had to protect itself from spending money on a player that was very likely not to survive training camp let alone a season.

[ctchiefsfan]

The idea that Alex "lost something" (either mentally or physically) after the Indy game has intrigued me since I first read it here. I think it was dugstr who first mentioned the idea. It certainly seemed to me that Alex wasn't his "usual self" after he came back from the injury week. I'm going to go look at some stats for a while and see if there is anything factual that would suggest it is more than a "feeling" we have. I'll report back and let you know what I found out.

[ctchiefsfan]

Well I checked stats for 2016. Total as well as pre and post injury numbers. I was unable to find anything in the numbers to suggest that Alex "wasn't himself after the Colts game". That honestly surprised me. Please understand that most of the numbers that follow were done by hand on a calculator so they may not be perfect.

2016 passing numbers....

328/489. 67.1% completion average. His best year as a Chief.
3,502 passing yards. His best year as a Chief by 16 yards over 2015 but in 14 1/2 games rather than 16 in 2015.
15 passing touchdowns. His worst year as a Chief.

Pre and post injury yards per attempt.

Pre....7.06 yards per attempt.
Post...7.28 yards per attempt.
Not a lot of difference, but better than it was before the injury.

Pre and post injury completion %.

Pre....67.8%
Post...67.9%
Not a lot of difference, but a hair better than it was before the injury.



2016 rushing numbers....

48 attempts for 134 yards. His worst year as a Chief.
1st downs rushing. 9. His worst as a Chief.

That didn't tell me much so I broke down some numbers for before and after the Colts game to see if that had a substantial impact on his performance.

Pre Colts game rushing attempts per game...2.84 per game.
Post Colts game rushing attempts per game...3.63 per game.
He made more rushing attempts per game after the injury than he did before.

Pre Colts game yards per rushing attempt. 22 yards...17 attempts...1.29 yards per attempt.
Post Colts game yards per rushing attempt. 103 yards...29 attempts...3.55 yards per attempt.
He got more yards per attempt after the injury than he did before.

Conclusions....

When you take into account that Alex played only 14 1/2 games he had a "career year" in most stats other than rushing but his rushing attempts and yards per carry increased after the injury. Contrary to what I expected, Alex showed more willingness to take off with the ball after the injury than before and did so more successfully. So I am unable to conclude that Alex was less willing or able to run with the ball after the injury than before and was equally capable of throwing the ball after the injury as he was before.

Summation....

Alex had a great year which seems odd to me since I would have sworn he just wasn't as good after those hits in Indy as he before.

It is worth noting however that Alex total rushing attempts for 2016 were substantially lower than than any previous year in KC. But his willingness to run with the ball does not seem to have been affected by his injury

All in all I am perplexed and confused.

[Eydugstr]

Well I checked stats for 2016. Total as well as pre and post injury numbers. I was unable to find anything in the numbers to suggest that Alex "wasn't himself after the Colts game". That honestly surprised me. Please understand that most of the numbers that follow were done by hand on a calculator so they may not be perfect.

2016 passing numbers....

328/489. 67.1% completion average. His best year as a Chief.
3,502 passing yards. His best year as a Chief by 16 yards over 2015 but in 14 1/2 games rather than 16 in 2015.
15 passing touchdowns. His worst year as a Chief.

Pre and post injury yards per attempt.

Pre....7.06 yards per attempt.
Post...7.28 yards per attempt.
Not a lot of difference, but better than it was before the injury.

Pre and post injury completion %.

Pre....67.8%
Post...67.9%
Not a lot of difference, but a hair better than it was before the injury.



2016 rushing numbers....

48 attempts for 134 yards. His worst year as a Chief.
1st downs rushing. 9. His worst as a Chief.

That didn't tell me much so I broke down some numbers for before and after the Colts game to see if that had a substantial impact on his performance.

Pre Colts game rushing attempts per game...2.84 per game.
Post Colts game rushing attempts per game...3.63 per game.
He made more rushing attempts per game after the injury than he did before.

Pre Colts game yards per rushing attempt. 22 yards...17 attempts...1.29 yards per attempt.
Post Colts game yards per rushing attempt. 103 yards...29 attempts...3.55 yards per attempt.
He got more yards per attempt after the injury than he did before.

Conclusions....

When you take into account that Alex played only 14 1/2 games he had a "career year" in most stats other than rushing but his rushing attempts and yards per carry increased after the injury. Contrary to what I expected, Alex showed more willingness to take off with the ball after the injury than before and did so more successfully. So I am unable to conclude that Alex was less willing or able to run with the ball after the injury than before and was equally capable of throwing the ball after the injury as he was before.

Summation....

Alex had a great year which seems odd to me since I would have sworn he just wasn't as good after those hits in Indy as he before.

It is worth noting however that Alex total rushing attempts for 2016 were substantially lower than than any previous year in KC. But his willingness to run with the ball does not seem to have been affected by his injury

All in all I am perplexed and confused.

Great post, ctc.

Keep in mind a lot of those numbers are averages over the course of the two parts of Alex's season (pre/post Indy game) so they don't necessarily show the highs and lows that happened during the games. Sometimes the highs don't exactly tell the full story either (for example, the first game of the season against the Chargers when Alex threw for 360+ yards - San Diego actually dominated that game until the fourth quarter! But Alex and the offense did turn it up at the end, didn't quit, and came out with a hard earned W).

The other counterpoint I'd make is when you talk about the rushing yardage going up after the Indy game...The extra yardage was Alex changing what he was doing when he scrambled. Before, Alex would try to slide at the end of his rushes in an attempt to make the defensive player draw a flag. After he got hit in the Indy game, he swore off doing that in favor of just rushing straight, which would explain some of the extra yards.

While I still believe that hit really affected Alex, maybe we should look at the fact that the numbers didn't drop off severely as a testament to the fact that Alex and the team worked hard to make sure it didn't become a statistical red flag for other teams to use as a tool against us in '16.

[brdempsey69]

Maybe we can chalk it up to the rotten luck that the Chiefs have had in the post season since the re-alignment of the NFL and AFL in 1970 (post season record of 4-15 since that time which is horrific). The .gif image is just unexplainable, just like the missed FG's by Stenerud in the 1971 Christmas day game.

Back on the subject thread, let's hope our rookies that we drafted can make a significant contribution & help the Chiefs win enough games to get back to the post-season.