HappyDays

There's no way a $2.4M cap difference led to a 5th vs a 3rd. That is about the quality of the players being traded more than anything. I sincerely don't know any analyst that thinks Hopkins is as good as Cooper at this point in their careers. I guess we'll see.

He would have had more targets if he earned them by getting open. His target share was a function of his limited skill set.

Who has said he's a top tier WR in the class of a Ceedee Lamb? He is a #1 WR that can play outside. That's what this offense needed.

That's just perception. All relevant rushing metrics we are slightly below average. YPC, YPG, yards before contact, you name it. We've had, what, one drive the entire season where we dominated our opponent on the ground? That is the what our IOL is built for.

No we don't have the line, the coaching, or the QB to have the Ravens run offense. They are one of a kind. The hindsight move is signing Darnell Mooney instead of Curtis Samuel.

I'm sorry man but you are just wrong on this one, and weirdly boastful about it. Your mind is stuck in 2022. This is like saying "Stefon Diggs is as good as Nico Collins" and scoffing at anyone that disagrees. Hopkins has legitimately fallen off. When WRs fall off they fall off fast. Hopkins is still a good player, but he is not close to a 1,500 yard WR like Rice was trending before Patty gave him the ol' Tonya Harding.

Cooper is better than Hopkins right now. Not even a question. He's younger, his physical abilities haven't diminished as much, he has better separation skills, he's less injury prone. If you don't believe me, believe the NFL market - Cooper went for a 3rd, Hopkins went for a 5th. That tells you where the players are valued. I don't know, I can't bring myself to worry too much about this trade. The Chiefs are undoubtedly better off now than they were last week, but they are undoubtedly worse off than they were in August. They were always going to trade for a WR once Rice went down. This trade means they won't be trading for Kupp so to me that's a net positive. It was a move that they HAD to do, not a move that pushes them over the top.

I'm not sure how much of a separator Hopkins is at this stage of his career... I'll be interested to see how he fits in with Mahomes. Mahomes has never been the type to throw up contested catches and they've never had somebody like that in their offense. But he is better than Skyy Moore so obviously it is a good trade for them. Just not really a big needle mover IMO.

This was the knock on him coming out. Long way to go but I think his ceiling might be automatically capped by his size. Still a scary player in that offense though.

This is something that could change the conversation for me. I would need to know the exact details on what he would cost against the cap. If the biggest part of the trade is draft capital then I am completely fine with that. If on the other hand the cap impact is also substantial, and it comes down to affording Myles Garrett or say Amari Cooper I take Cooper every time, even knowing that Garrett is a better overall player. So I would need to know that we could afford Garrett AND a #1 WR to be comfortable with it.

Maybe. I don't mind if they take an edge rusher in the 1st round, a 1T I would obviously not be happy with. It isn't just about this upcoming pick, it's about the total amount of draft capital and cap space we'd be devoting to Myles Garrett. Allen is about to get a big raise and we don't have a #1 WR on the books beyond this year. If we can afford Garrett without yet again sacrificing Allen's supporting cast then sure go for it but it feels like a trade off would be necessary. My thought process is that we need to get past the Chiefs in the playoffs. Mahomes has gone against several elite pass rushers in their playoff runs, and really the TB loss was the only time it had an effect on their team. TJ Watt, Hassan Reddick, Nick Bosa - none of them have really made a difference. If the thought is that we need a closer on defense, I can get myself there. I still worry about the investment trade off though. I'm ready for a total philosophical switch where as much capital as possible is invested into building the best possible support system around Allen. I know edge rusher is a game changing position, but making yet another big investment in the DL would leave a bad taste in my mouth.

Obviously this is somewhat dependent on QB quality, but he's leading all rookies in EPA per target and 3rd in total EPA. And he is still very raw and ascending.

No, I am done giving up a ton of assets for the DL. Multiple high picks and a bunch of cap space that could be used building the offense around Allen. I know Garrett is a star but he is not going to be the reason this team wins a Super Bowl. Allen throwing to a boatload of weapons with great pass protection, that will be the reason. Whatever money Garrett would get next year, give it to Amari Cooper.

Trading up in the 1st round for a non-QB is generally not good business. Hindsight will always end up featuring at least one player you wish you had traded up for, but without that benefit you want to have as many dart throws as possible. IMO Beane's real mistake in this one was failing to draft a 2nd WR. I can't begrudge him for doing the statistically wise thing and keeping his picks on hand, especially for a trade that nobody actually knows if it was available. I do begrudge him for passing on other WRs that were available later in the draft. Oh well. At least he fixed his mistake before the season was lost. Assuming Cooper performs as well in this offense as I expect him to he is a priority re-sign for me next offseason. Him plus a sophomore Coleman plus Shakir plus some other WR we hopefully draft in rounds 1-3, now we're talking.

I'm all for having an elite run offense but we have to be honest about the personnel and coaching that we have. A lot of our drives are ending early because we're throwing away 2nd downs. At this point we just gotta lean on our strength. We didn't start dominating the Titans because of "balance", we had our new and improved group of weapons run routes downfield and had Josh gun them the ball for big gains. That's our offensive identity now, as it should have been all along.

Even putting the stats aside, I've never once this year felt like we were just imposing our will on the ground. We have a lot of runs that go nowhere or get negative yardage, mixed in with a couple really nice runs, and a lot of 2-3 yard runs on run downs. Which is the definition of an average run offense. And that's to be expected. Our IOL is built more for the pass than the run and Brady is not a mad scientist with his run scheme. It's mostly basic and asks average interior run blockers to just win their rep. I think adding Cooper could open the run up a bit by giving defenses one extra thing to worry about. I'm still not expecting us to suddenly build a bully run offense or to be better than average. Run enough to keep defenses honest but otherwise let the offense run through its best trait which is Josh throwing the ball downfield.

Honest question for you - if Allen so far this year had 7 total TDs and 8 total turnovers (instead of the 15 TDs and 2 turnovers he has) what would our record be right now? I'm going with 2-5. 3-4 is the absolute ceiling. There's no need to pretend Mahomes has some kind of magic ability that allows him to get away with such a poor TD to INT ratio. The Chiefs as a team have an incredibly high margin for error. We are the polar opposite.

I doubt it. The Dolphins and Jaguars games are the only ones that would apply to. The Titans blowout if anything helped our run efficiency stats because of Davis' big run when the game was already over and Tennessee was ready to get out of the stadium. You're not the first I've seen to believe the run offense is better than it actually is. I think our high volume of rush attempts is skewing the perception of how efficient we really are. I've noticed 2nd downs in particular are usually 1 yard gains at most, if they even get any positive yardage. Anyways I can't bring myself to really care. The new look passing offense with Amari Cooper on the field looks even better in all-22 than it did live. For the first time since maybe October of last year I feel like we have a legit downfield passing offense again. Screw establishing the run. Put the fear of God back into these opppsing defenses and everything else will open up.

I don't see it. We're 19th in rush YPA, 19th in rush YPG. It feels like we want to be a balanced offense (we're 8th in rush percentage at 48.86%) but we don't have the interior OL or the run scheme to to be anything more than average.

If he was playing like Josh did against Houston the Chiefs defense would have held them to like 17 points and they would have won easily.

The 49ers defense was disgustingly bad. It looks better in the box score than it did live. Mahomes missed multiple wide open big completions. He had Worthy open on an over route that he might have been able to accelerate upfield and score but Mahomes short hopped the pass, and he overthrew Worthy on like a 70 yard bomb that would have been a TD. Underthrew Kelce on a seam route too. Plus the two INTs. But make no mistake, the Chiefs had open receivers all over the field and only their own mistakes stopped them from putting up like 40 points on them... The spacing of that offensive scheme is unbelievably good. Mahomes will probably start playing better at some point, when that happens I don't know who stops them. I actually think it might have to be their NFC opponent in the Super Bowl. I could see Matt LaFleur or Ben Johnson having some success against Spagnuolo. I don't see anybody in the AFC slowing them down, unfortunately.

I didn't mean just in this game, I mean in general. 27th in EPA per play in the 1st half is abysmal, and the stark difference in the 2nd half indicates that we can and should be much better than that early on. I can even forgive them a bit for the Titans game specifically - having to adjust at the last minute from a Will Levis led offense to Mason Rudolph may have impacted whatever game plan they had to start. But on the season as a whole there is a larger problem there.

As for solutions... maybe be willing to play more man early on? I know that does not match up particularly well with the skill set of our CBs, but anything is better than letting offenses come out and easily pick up chunk yardage through our predictable zone spacing. If it's gonna be that easy, at least make their guys beat our guys. Also I think we should be telling the DL to be a bit more conservative early on. Multiple teams this year have taken advantage of our penetration style defense. It's getting us burned on draws and screens especially early in games. If our players aren't going to recognize when the OL is purposefully letting them get upfield, the coaches need to adjust their style. There's no reason it should take us an entire half to make these adjustments when every team is killing us in the same way.

The injuries keep coming for KC. Not that it makes any kind of difference. The only team that can lose 4 starters and still be the clear Super Bowl favorites.