I'm worried Gay will have nagging turf toe well into the season and not be the same player he was in preseason.
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Even though it's likely Frank Clark won't be on the team next year. It's hard to imagine replacing him. Although he often goes quiet on the field. He's still a presence the team feeds off of. You don't replace leaders in one year.
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When did anyone ever think Clark was a 16 sack/season guy? Anyone could look at his career and see that he's been a consistent 9.5 sack/season guy. If anyone was stupid enough to believe that Clark was going to come to KC and suddenly nearly double his production in sacks is just a complete moron.
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You said it yourself: CLE owns the best/second-best rushing attack in the league. Which means that nearly every team in the NFL is going to struggle against them. You think KC's defense should somehow miraculously be able to do what nearly all the other 32 defenses can't? Some people here are going to blame the fact that Clark/Mathieu/Gay didn't play in this game for the Chiefs' poor showing vs. the Brown's Run game. But that's BS. Okay, maybe if those guys all played the Browns' rushing attack would've been slightly less effective. But the reality is that KC's defense and Spags' philosophy isn't about stopping the run. It never has been.

Yeah, Spags wants to limit the other team's running game. But he has never built a defense with the express purpose of stopping the run. He's always been about pressuring the DC/QB into making bad decisions, period. His mandate has always been: "Hold the lead when we get the lead."

JC, just look how it was built from Day 1.

Chris Jones and Nnadi inside, one guy to stop the run, and one to go after the passer. Clark to create outside pressure, and coax the opponent to run away from Clark.

A LB corps that is weighted towards coverage, not run stopping.

A competent , physical CB unit. Not elite speed, or even top tier talent-wise, but big and physical and not afraid to tackle.

Elite-level coverage safeties, that like to hit.

Where in there is "elite-level run-stopping unit"?

Someone, whether it was Andy or Spags, or whoever, decided around the time Spags was hired that stopping the run wasn't a priority for the Chiefs' defense. You can see that in how it's built. The defense is built to be situationally very good. In particular, it's built to play with a lead. It's never going to be the '85 Bears. Even if we had the money, it's not how Spags is building the defense.

He's designed a defense that forces the opposing OC/QB to have to think, which leads to hesitation, and often mistakes. Our defense isn't designed to be the best at any one thing. JFC, look at them. Everyone that matters is a poster boy for "jack-of-all-trades." Clark: not the greatest pass-rusher, but better than average, and difficult to run against. Chris Jones. The second-best passing-rushing DT in the league, and a top-tier DE as well. Hitchens: Not great at any one thing, but a solid leader of the defense. Sorenson: the most durable, consistent, reliable Chief maybe ever. 'nuff said. Mathieu is the textbook example, for ffs. Not the best at any one thing. Just really good/great at a bunch of things. And how does Spags use him? HB is literally everywhere. He plays CB, slot, LB, and safety from snap-to-snap. Equally as well. And it's that versatility that makes the Honey Badger so dangerous, and why he's a top-5 S. It makes OCs have to account for him on every snap. And QBs might hesitate n extra fraction of a second before throwing the ball in Tyrann's direction.

We have two elite-level players on the defense in Chris Jones and Tyrann Mathieu.

But we are blessed with a multitude of Swiss Army knives. From snap-to-snap it's tough to tell what our defense might be up to, because most of our guys are pretty versatile. You can't say that any of our CBs are just 'cover' guys that don't tackle well. All over CBs can tackle. Same for our LBs.

They might not be the best at any one thing (though I have high hopes for Gay/Bolton) they all can play every down, and rally to the ball well.

But as a whole, we have one of the most opportunistic situational defenses in the NFL.

We're probably never going to be better than 16th or so against the run for at least a couple more years. But against the pass we'll rank in the top-10, and situationally we'll probably be in the top 5.

It's the price we have to pay literally to pay for keeping great weapons for Mahomes to throw to.
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We could of signed Melvin Ingram for only 4 million and he is a better pass-rusher than Clark.

I suspect our first pick is WR or DE.
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Please try to stay on point... We are talking about Frank Clark and setting the edge. You can't just look at stats from two different scenarios and assume they are similar. For example, nearly 50 yards of Baker's passing came on the last play of the first half, yet his yardage was similar to Mahomes. Last year the Browns had success against us in between the tackles with our LB's underwhelming and banged up, this year it was outside the tackles. Our end play was horrendous Sunday, it pretty cut and dried.
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Spot on... Some would rather have Dee Ford and complete gashing we took every week than Frank. Again, criticism of his contract is fair game, but to say he hasn't improved and isn't a above average run defender is moronic.
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Never trust a classically trained pianist when the game is on the line.

*glares in disgust at SNR*
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Once again....the "gashing" are the same.

2020: 4.6 yards per carry Allowed
2019: 4.9 yards per carry Allowed
2018: 4.9 yards per carry Allowed
2017: 4.4 yards per carry Allowed


2020: 123 yards per game allowed
2019: 128.7 yards per game allowed
2018: 132.1 yards per game allowed
2017: 123.1 yards per game allowed


Boy we really stopped the gashing!
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Dee Ford wasn't fucking classically trained. He was just some asshole who liked music, was around it in his family, and then played by ear. If you put a fairly basic piece of sheet music in front of that hack and told him to sight read it, it'd probably take him hours to figure out the note patterns, and even after he did that you can forget about having any sense of accurate rhythm or tempo.

Sure, he'd probably do fine with a chord chart and if he had heard or was familiar with the melody, but that's not what it means to be classically trained. Composers write notes on the page and they intend you to play what they wrote. Dee Ford can't fucking do that. It's a lot like his football career. He can be impressive situationally, but he's far from a complete player who can be relied upon to do it all.

Also, fuck that guy with AIDS. That asshole is the reason why Mahomes doesn't have two Super Bowl rings right now. Hell, if he doesn't line up offsides, Brady finishes a big game with 1 TD 3 INTs and a loss in a big game in which he was at fault. Couple that with what Brady was the following season in New England, and the narrative on him as still having "got it" is quite different. Even if he still goes to Tampa and wins it thanks to Britt Reid and our OL injuries, people would be saying, "The decline is beginning. He's throwing more and more picks in playoff games. He can still win with a loaded team, and that's impressive at his age, but those turnovers aren't going away, and they could be your downfall." All thanks to Dee fucking Ford.
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Improved as a run defender? Maybe. The improvement we saw was throughout the 2019 season into the playoffs. Since then, no. He was much better with the Seahawks as a run defender than he was last year.

And as an overall DE, it's not even close. I'd rather have Seattle Frank Clark than KC Frank Clark.
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The general manager called him a 'Defensive Player of the Year' caliber player. Yes, look at the first Clark thread - there were absolutely 16 sack/season predictions.

I think I had him at 12-14 and I was down (to put it politely) on the trade.

Nobody had him coming in here and picking up 10 sacks. You don't make a 10 sack edge player one of the 5 highest paid defensive players in football.
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he hasn't improved. At all. He was a non-factor for 3/4 of the games he
played in his good season. And trash last season.

Again - show me anything to support that he wasn't a bad player last season. Hell, show me he was even an average run defender last season.

Give me anything at all to work with here. DVOA, Football outsiders grades, PFF - give me anything at all where they attempt to dive into Frank Clarks performance last year and shows him being even an average football player.

He wasn't. He was bad last year. Was he hurt? Yup, almost certainly. Was he hurt in Seattle? Yup. Was he hurt in his first year in KC? yup. Is he hurt now? Yup. Is he likely to ever be fully healthy in a Chiefs uniform? Nope.

We have an injury prone player who's established that the healthiest version we've seen of him is a solid run defender - no more. But because some people are so vested in the 'just doing his job!' narrative, they continue to overstate his contributions.
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We clearly don't care. Run. Go ahead. We would probably prefer you take 20 plays to score. 20 plays for something to go wrong, that you must do everything right, that our defense doesn't get lucky or make a great play.

You have to get everything right for 20 plays to score.

Us? Perhaps 7. Perhaps just 1...
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Fuck, even his cheerleading was down last year compared to 2019.
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