Quote:
Originally Posted by htismaqe
Just because the known alternatives are bad doesn't mean the road taken was good.
There's an old axiom about relative relationships here on CP.
> "bad" ≠ "good"
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An equally old axiom is that you shouldn't let perfect be the enemy of good.
But beyond that, there's something to be said for the broken road though, is there not?
I mean lets say the Chiefs decide "nah, we don't want Alex" and they sign...I dunno...Fitzpatrick. Or draft Geno. Or...well really, do just about anything other than what they did.
Would they have been in better shape over the last 5 years? Over the
next 5?
I don't think its unfair to ask for specifics here. To me, the only reasonable avenue for complaint was Derek Carr. Though my position was always that the problem wasn't Smith - it was not drafting Carr to follow him up and necessitate the Smith extension.
Well hindsight says that the Smith extension (when you account for the large cut in his base salary that year) was actually quite a bit below where the QB market ended up being. It also netted us Fuller and a 3rd. And it also, CRITICALLY, kept us from making the mistake that the Raiders made with Carr. What I always called at least a minor mistake sure seems at this point to be a blessing in disguise.
What other road to you see that would've yielded higher returns over the last 5 seasons or put us on a better road forward for the next 5? Bearing in mind that this franchise had already sucked the hind tit for 4 years and was fast on its way to being a Browns-esque laughing stock. For me, that also takes 'eat shit for 3 seasons and draft Wentz' off the table. I simply think you have a poison franchise at that point.
The decision to acquire Alex Smith gave us 5 years of stable footing that revamped this franchise into one that was healthy enough to polish the edges off Kelce and take (enormous) risks on Hill. It allowed them to develop a culture that has players expecting to win. And now it has the silver bullet to get them over the top. If they have 3-4 years of losing under the belt, do Dorsey/Reid/Veach have the organizational cache to say "Hey Clark - don't worry about this year; there's this raw gunslinger we need to draft...."? It's hard to say.
What possible series of outcomes could've been better than the one we got? Was there a path to a Super Bowl winning QB in there somewhere? Was the answer Nick Foles and we just never knew it?
Gotta squint pretty hard to say that the Smith acquisition and the direction it took the franchise wasn't exactly what we needed then and going forward.