Hindsight being 20/20, what should we have done instead? Houston was going to be an overpaid butthurt bitch after we kicked Berry's worthless ass to the curb, Ford IMMEDIATELY became a brokedick once again after he'd secured the bag, Clowney went to replace Clark in Seattle and did absolutely fuck all for them or the Titans, and the pick we traded for Clark would've probably been used on some bum like Tillery or Collier. Maybe Zadarius Smith? Maybe give him a shorter deal but even that doesn't make too much of a difference.
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Why do you presume nothing in Clark's place?

Trey Flowers could've easily been who Clark was. Za'Darius Smith has been demonstrably better than Smith. Both of them cost less in cap and would've required zero draft capital.

It was a bad move. It was tunnel vision and/or Veach believing what he wanted to believe.
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Hindsight being 20/20, we should’ve traded up for Montez Sweat.

Problem is, I’m pretty sure he wasn’t even on our board. TwistedChief said when he talked to Veach about the trade, that they talked about a certain prospect, and Veach said he wasn’t on their board due to medicals.
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Right, figured that. We had more than a handful of top 30 visits be DL and Sweat wasn't one of them.
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Considering that KC can walk away from him after this year with minimal cap impact make that deal essentially a three year one. If he played up to his contract, then it's a win for us. If he doesn't we cut bait like we almost assuredly will do.
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Because that’s not how things work.

There’s no telling how things play out if they were done differently. The butterfly effect.

You can sit here with your armchair GM bullshit all you want, but if you were in charge and didn’t make that trade, there’s no guarantee we still have a SB ring. That’s just an indisputable fact.

Yes, we’d absolutely be better off now, and would’ve been last year too. That still doesn’t mean we’d have a guaranteed ring like we do now.
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It's not hindsight, though.

The Frank Clark Wars are probably second only to the Matt Cassel Armageddon in living CP memory.

There were some pretty heated battles then and there's really little point in re-litigating them. I'm largely just repeating myself.

There were red flags all over that trade.
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And maybe we'd have two.

We can speculate all we want - that's why we're here.

But only one of us is going whole hog into a post hoc ergo propter hoc fallacy here...
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I’m not denying that’s the case at all.

It’s just beyond the point. The fact that we don’t know is all that matters, so like I said, gun to my head, give me the guaranteed ring.
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I will say this however, Clark was a big reason we won the SB, and I don’t think he was at the top of the list of reasons we lost last year.

With that said, I do think it’s more likely we win none at all than 2, but obviously that’s all speculation.
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I'd really like to know how even hypothetically not trading for Clark nets us two rings.
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Opportunity cost.
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That's a tough sell. Because the playoff and super bowl run, he played on an mvp level in the playoffs. I agree that he and Sammy are two guys we've overpaid and didn't get much time out of them. But man, those guys were really crucial to winning a super bowl.
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The Texans and Titans games were ultimately ended with Frank Clark prominently involved, but they were by no means decided by him. Both of those games were effectively over at that point.

And as I've said previously - essentially every single play counted in the SB and Frank Clark was a big part of one. So I'll tip my cap there. But I don't think he did anything even in that game that was truly remarkable. He had his patented 'clean up' sack but the guy who really controlled the LOS in that game was Chris Jones. Hell, K-Pass probably had his best game as a Chief. He's the one that forced Grapes up into Clark on that last sack and he's also the guy that came up the middle to force the overthrow on that play to Emmanuel Sanders.

The DL just played with its hair on fire that game and yes, Clark was part of that. And it could've just as easily been someone like Smith or Flowers doing the same thing.

But I'll concede that yes - that's speculation. But when the entirety of any passing grade for one of the biggest transactions in franchise history hinges on a 'but/for' sort of argument, it's fair to question that argument.
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I'm going to have to disagree with at least the Texans game. 10 pressures and 3 sacks. That's some incredible production and absolutely played a massive role in that 49-7 run we had that game.
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