HappyDays

Is Ridley even good anymore? That would feel like a move just to make a move. We need a real difference maker IMO. I guess just about anything is better than Coleman at the X position right now.

Whelp hopefully it's Olave or BTJ.

Wow! When is the last time a player was traded immediately after signing a long term extension? This feels unprecedented.

The reason not to do it is it makes it more costly to get out of Taron's contract before it expires. So when teams do these restructures it's for a specific reason that they need the cap space for.

I always find it interesting the messaging that teams are filtering through reporters. "Unless blown away by an offer" is something you only put out there if you want a team to make you that offer. But what does blown away? One 1st round pick? Two?

Rapoport says Hunter won't be out long: I find it interesting that the Jags are choosing to put this info out there. Precursor to BTJ getting traded? I don't want to get my hopes up but it's possible.

Yeah I hear you but our personnel is built to run the ball and we have to live with that. If you put Kincaid on the Diggs/Brown/Beasley offense he would feast. With the current roster construction he's more a chess piece that you deploy situationally. I can't complain when it works as well as it did yesterday. Also I'm still not convinced Kincaid has earned a full time heavy volume role. To my eyes he is winning mostly with his pure athletic gifts which make him a mismatch versus LBs. I don't think he has gotten the nuances of the position totally down yet. Still doesn't do a great job of working open in zone or on scramble drills. But when you ask him to just run by his man, or give him a manufactured catch and run opportunity, that's when his gifts become valuable.

Knox and Hawes are better run blockers so it makes sense that Kincaid's snap counts will be lower, especially in a game we got up by two scores. Same reason Coleman and Shavers are still getting a higher than you'd expect snap share.

One name I had seen brought up is off the menu:

The base salary is the only thing that matters when it comes to trades. The rest of the cap hit is made up of signing bonus, workout bonus, etc. that the original team has already paid out. Olave's base salary is $1.5M. Since we're halfway through the season the trading team would only pay him $750K against the cap.

I'd blame both honestly. Probably more Hancock because he is guarding grass and never gets his head around to see what's going on behind him. Once Mahomes finishes his drop and the ball isn't out Hancock has to know he needs to find someone and plaster. His running mate Bishop did that a couple times in this game and made huge stops as a result. I don't get mad at Hancock though because he's a day three rookie playing in his 2nd ever NFL action. Bernard frustrates me more because it looks like he sees Kelce working open but inexplicably hesitates before sprinting to him. That little indecisiveness means he gets there too late. Bernard was also responsible for the 4th and 17 conversion. He runs right past Rice's crossing route to double Kelce who is already bottled up.

Are you for real man? You don't think there is a single X receiver in the NFL that can get open against man coverage? What in the world... I'm begging you to watch the tape. Coleman is superglued to his man on almost every play. There are a few times on the Chiefs tape where Allen gets his eyes to Coleman 1v1 and the read just isn't there.

Any random player can have a good play now and again. I'm talking about consistency. We have no consistent outside WR ability right now. We're papering over it with a strong run game and quick efficient passes. I'm fine making that version of our offense 90% of what we do but in high leverage situations where we just need a bucket I still have no confidence we have the horses to get one. A lot of fans were pissed at Brady for that 3rd and 10 screen, but he called that play because even he doesn't have confidence in his WRs to get open. I personally had no problem with that play call. That's the world we have to live in with this personnel. The last time we saw Gabe in the Joe Brady offense, his targets were being intentionally diminished. Brady wants no part of Gabe's low efficiency/high negative play rate style of WR. Like I said he's a better option than Shavers. I still do not want him to suddenly become a key part of this offense.

I have no confidence at all that Gabe will give us anything. He's spent months recovering from a lower leg injury and was already held out of practice on Friday because of "soreness." Even when healthy he is not the answer at X. If he recovers and pushes Shavers off the roster sure I'm fine with that. Palmer is our best outside WR right now, getting him back will help for sure. But he is definitely not a #1. Sometimes you just need your best guy to beat their best guy. Palmer isn't somebody that could beat Trent McDuffie for example 1v1. We need more there. Our offense works great when we have high success rates on 1st and 2nd down. The problem is that any 0 yard or negative play immediately gets us out of our preferred drive script. 3rd and 7 or longer feels almost insurmountable. Having a legit X gives us the double benefit of having one more option to keep our 1st and 2nd downs on schedule, and the possibility of converting a 3rd and long versus running a surrender screen to Shakir.

But there are also plays where you need a WR to separate outside and that remains a problem for us. The 2nd video, if we had a legit outside WR instead of Coleman that WR might have gotten open and that was Allen's 2nd progression in the play. Shakir gets chucked at the line which makes him late to his route break, the break is also rounded which gives Bryan Cook time and leverage to get involved at the catch point. And then that 3rd and 10 screen to Shakir, we only call plays like that because Brady knows we don't have a traditional drop back pass game where we can expect somebody to separate quickly. Love the win yesterday. We ran well and Allen got back to his 2024 hyper efficient play style. But don't let the win cover up the fact that we still have a major issue at outside WR. There are several plays that pop up on tape where we just need our X to win his route to give us a chance at a completion, and Coleman just can't do it.

I didn't notice him once so I take that as a good sign. I'm sure they are protecting him somewhat with the coverage calls, they know he can't just cover 1v1 anymore. The nice thing with Hairston is you can just plaster him to the opponent's fastest WR and trust that he will stay connected to them.

It was an exact 50/50 split. Poyer/Hancock was 57/43.

I'm trying to not overreact too much and understand that there will be ups and downs with a young player. But the energy, the confidence, the quick development - the comparison that keeps coming into my head is prime Tre White if he had 4.29 speed.

More examples of Bishop dominating: We knew about the athleticism, but it's the instincts on a lot of these plays that has me excited. Looks like the lightbulb turned on right when we needed it.

Bishop might have intercepted that pass if Hairston didn't:

The Chiefs were 10-0 in one score games last year. This year they're 0-4. Analytics nerds rejoice.

Losing Hoecht for the year on its own doesn't bother me too much. But having it happen immediately after losing Oliver for the year is a gut punch. We just lost all of our interior pass rush ability in the span of two weeks. The only saving grace is that it happened right before the trade deadline. Adding an interior pass rusher just became an absolute necessity. There are a few good options out there that could be had for probably a day three pick.

I know I'm alone on this but I had no issue with that play call. I had an issue with our 4th and 2 attempt where we just ran a normal drop back pass play hoping someone would get open... On critical downs we have to stick to the few plays that work with our personnel. We aren't built to convert 3rd and 10, unfortunately, so there aren't any perfect options there. Once we get into 3rd and long we've kind of already lost. So I understood the thinking there - get 5+ yards from Shakir and get into 4th and manageable. Didn't work out that way which makes it worse with hindsight but I'd still bet on that concept over the normal drop back pass where one of our WRs needs to separate. Overall I think Brady did what he needed to do in this game. Other than that failed 4th and 2 he spammed Cook runs, quick passes to Shakir, and ran the downfield passing offense almost exclusively through the TEs. Those three concepts have to be 90% of our offense. If you spam those plays enough you'll get the occasional Elijah Moore splitting the safeties downfield because the defense forgets about him.

One name I haven't seen mentioned is Browns DT Maliek Collins. He's PFF's 4th ranked DT this year. I take their rankings with a grain of salt but it means something. He's a veteran at 30 years old so he could assimilate quickly. Good breakdown of him here: https://www.dawgsbynature.com/cleveland-browns-roster-players/105920/browns-maliek-collins-underrated-nfl-players-2025-myles-garrett-mason-graham His base salary for the year is $1.255M so I believe he'd count around half of that against our cap... We'd have him under contract for 2026 too at just a $5.7M cap hit. You could theoretically trade for him and Shaheed without having to do a lot of cap gymnastics.

That is what stuck out to me as well. PBUs have been a problem for us all year. It was nice to see a Bills player repeatedly knocking the ball away. Always hard to tell on broadcast footage but I thought Bishop was playing a good amount of man in this game and that seems to fit his skill set better. No thinking, just use his natural athleticism to plaster and make a play at the catch point.