KC Wolf
Well-known member
- Mar 19, 2019
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In a normal year, having 20 of 22 starters returning from a championship team would be a good thing. As you may have heard, this is not a normal year.
(Commercial announcer voice: “In these uncertain times, . . .”)
So for Chiefs General Manager Brett Veach, the fact his team is returning largely intact after last year’s Super Bowl win is a good sign, whenever football happens to return.
“Continuity is good in any year, especially this year with having limited or no [offseason practice] and additional practice time,” Veach said, via Adam Teicher of ESPN.com. “The more guys you have around that are familiar with how we do things, the playbook, what’s expected of them, certainly that’s beneficial.
“This kind of played out, I think, working out for us. I don’t think it was our intention to . . . get this [pandemic] and then say, ‘All right, let’s just go after our guys and [have] continuity.’ Our intention was ‘Let’s retain our guys, let’s keep continuity’ and then this format, which is now real, just happened to fall into line with being a very workable format for us.”
The only starters from the Super Bowl who left in free agency were guard Stefen Wisniewski (Steelers) and linebacker Reggie Ragland (Lions), and while they are certainly fine players, it was probably more important that they franchise-tagged defensive lineman Chris Jones and beat Sammy Watkins into a pay cut so they didn’t have to lose him, and re-signed cornerback Bashaud Breeland after he didn’t find what he was looking for in the market.
“Our intention before this terrible epidemic unfolded was that we’re going to really focus on the draft,” Veach said. “We have five picks, and we’re really going to make the most of them. In free agency, we’re going to look to maintain the players we have on our team and it worked out. Being able to redo Sammy’s deal and bring Demarcus [Robinson] back and [fullback Anthony Sherman] back and Mike Pennel back, we were certainly hopeful that would be an outcome. I’m not going to sit here and lie and say all these guys, we were certain they would come back, but that was our goal before this [virus] broke out.”
Of course, the bigger job for long-term stability will be paying Patrick Mahomes an appropriate amount of money, and that will likely necessitate some personnel changes. But at the moment, they’re more than happy to run it back with an already good team.
(Commercial announcer voice: “In these uncertain times, . . .”)
So for Chiefs General Manager Brett Veach, the fact his team is returning largely intact after last year’s Super Bowl win is a good sign, whenever football happens to return.
“Continuity is good in any year, especially this year with having limited or no [offseason practice] and additional practice time,” Veach said, via Adam Teicher of ESPN.com. “The more guys you have around that are familiar with how we do things, the playbook, what’s expected of them, certainly that’s beneficial.
“This kind of played out, I think, working out for us. I don’t think it was our intention to . . . get this [pandemic] and then say, ‘All right, let’s just go after our guys and [have] continuity.’ Our intention was ‘Let’s retain our guys, let’s keep continuity’ and then this format, which is now real, just happened to fall into line with being a very workable format for us.”
The only starters from the Super Bowl who left in free agency were guard Stefen Wisniewski (Steelers) and linebacker Reggie Ragland (Lions), and while they are certainly fine players, it was probably more important that they franchise-tagged defensive lineman Chris Jones and beat Sammy Watkins into a pay cut so they didn’t have to lose him, and re-signed cornerback Bashaud Breeland after he didn’t find what he was looking for in the market.
“Our intention before this terrible epidemic unfolded was that we’re going to really focus on the draft,” Veach said. “We have five picks, and we’re really going to make the most of them. In free agency, we’re going to look to maintain the players we have on our team and it worked out. Being able to redo Sammy’s deal and bring Demarcus [Robinson] back and [fullback Anthony Sherman] back and Mike Pennel back, we were certainly hopeful that would be an outcome. I’m not going to sit here and lie and say all these guys, we were certain they would come back, but that was our goal before this [virus] broke out.”
Of course, the bigger job for long-term stability will be paying Patrick Mahomes an appropriate amount of money, and that will likely necessitate some personnel changes. But at the moment, they’re more than happy to run it back with an already good team.