Quote:
Originally Posted by chiefzilla1501
He wasn't frontloading contracts for a later date. He was loading this team up with short term deals we can easily get out of. Tempting for him to sign blue chip superstars. We've seen lots of teams load up on a short super bowl window by stockpiling talent for a few years only to see the cap explode in a few years once the dead money hits. The Chiefs aren't at risk of that. Because outside of the big 3 they barely have enough guaranteed money a few years out. You may consider guys like Watkins as luxury contracts and overpaid. I call them stopgap deals.
Veach loaded our team with a super bowl roster while giving us flexibility to keep mahomes and jones. He gave us a new 4 year window without saddling us with dead money deals. That is something they couldn't do around QBs like Russell Wilson. And at the end of the 4 years, he STILL managed to build flexibility into the mahomes deal to build a team around him. Flexibility guys like Aaron Rodgers didn't have. We have to get a lot of things right but the table is set.
On the jones deal... The deal itself wasn't brilliant. But I don't think it's a coincidence that jones got a 4 year deal while mahomes took a 4 year discount. Jones is a chief because of the brilliance of the mahomes contract.
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We 'easily got out of' Watkins by overpaying him for another season. We 'easily got out of' Hitchens by extending him to a deal it will still hurt to walk away from.
The point is that we've been able to 'easily get out of' some of those deals by absorbing fairly substantial dead cap hits or extending guys to deals that we simply won't be able to do with any frequency going forward.
And that's part of what's made the degree of difficulty lesser for him. While his competition in the division is dragging along $20+ million mediocrity in Rivers and Carr, he's got the biggest swinging dick on the planet at 1/4 of that AND a few HoF caliber talents that were on the roster he took over who are were also below market due to pre-existing contracts or circumstances not of Veach's making.
This job hasn't been a difficult one. Now that's not to take away from the job he's done - but he has had it far easier than most.