Scott Pioli Needs To Double Down
Kansas City Chiefs Gm Scott Pioli stopped by The Border Patrol on 10 Sports Radio this morning.
One interesting piece of news Pioli passed along was that the Chiefs did try to re-sign DE Shaun Smith and DT Ron Edwards. We had heard that the Chiefs were negotiating with Smith but this is the first time I have heard that they did attempt to re-sign Edwards.
Since both players decided to leave in free agency, we can conclude one of two things.
- The were offered more money to play elsewhere, so they left
- They just did not want to play for the Chiefs anymore
If I were a betting man, I’d say it is #1. Smith, who is very vocal on Twitter, seemed to love playing in Kansas City. Edwards, however, has always been pretty quiet.
There are other possibilities, of course. Edwards and Smith may have liked the cities the were moving to better, the moves may have put them closer to family or they may have been promised more playing time. They also may have been offered longer contracts and thus more security.
In the end though, these things usually come down to money.
I don’t fault the Chiefs for not wanting to overpay Edwards and Smith (though I think Smith was valuable and likely worth the money he is getting in Tennessee) but I do fault them for not having a proper backup plan. I personally do not think Kelly Gegg is going to play any better next year than Ron Edwards played last year. Sure this is just a hunch but I am basing some of my opinion on Pro Football Focus’s assessment of Edwards and Gregg in 2010. If PFF is to be believed, the Chiefs would have been better off keeping Edwards. (I realize other factors go into things like this, such as the competition level for each guy. Gegg’s was clearly a tougher schedule).
The Chiefs have plenty of money to out-bid pretty much any other team. While I don’t think they should overspend, I don’t think they should let quality players like Shaun Smith walk away either. Especially when they don’t appear to have a clear plan to replace that player.
When I was in elementary school, we once had an Easter-egg hunt on the lawn behind the school. The eggs were hidden and they let us all run out onto the lawn at once. Rather than grab one of the eggs laying in the grass in plain sight, I started looking in the bushes and at the base of trees for more hidden eggs. My thinking here was that the prizes inside the obviously placed eggs would pale in comparison to those inside the eggs that were more hidden.
In the end, I didn’t get a single egg. I got too clever thinking I would hit it big and I came up empty.
I feel like Scott Pioli may sometimes get a little too clever for his own good. That is why I think, for the rest of this free agency period, Piloli should double down on everything. It would have only taken me a couple of extra seconds to grab those initial eggs and then I could have gone off to look for a needle in a haystack.
Pioli doesn’t have to be foolish…but he should make sure he gets something before all the good eggs are gone.