…it already is. By a long shot.

Everette Brown (who the Panther’s gave up this years 1st rounder for) in the 2nd round or Michael Johnson in the 3rd round for RDE. There is no question in my mind Herm’s team (who was one draft away from being where he had invisioned it) would have been a better team than Haley’s this year. Instead he was pushed out the door before his plan came into full fruition. I’m not crying over spilled make, just stating the obvious. I’m over it though because as I’ve spoke with this about my Pops – what championships has Peterson & Edwards ever won? We use the analogy of building a house a lot between the two administrations but the reality is one (the former) never really built anything while the other has built structure’s which all builders & contractor’s seek to model. It was just painful as a Chief’s fan because the timing. Our house was soo close to be done and we weathered the storm for 3 years. We were about to put the finishing touches on it before Donald Trump became available to us and we said the hell with this, let’s go big!

At this point, Jared Allen’s best year was his last with the Chiefs…and that was playing next to Ron Edwards and James Reed. He’s now playing next to arguably the best DT tandem in the league, and producing fewer sacks. I’m okay with having traded him at what appears, so far, to be the pinnacle of his career.

“we can legitimately question whether Pioli destructed a perfectly good, working defense in exchange for an inferior defense he was more comfortable with”. Ughhh…what? Our defense was god awful, not that this year’s was better, but we lacked technique, we lacked coaching, and we lacked more than a few pieces realistically. Our team got progressively more OUT of shape as this season’s went on under Herm. I don’t even know how that happens. There was a sense of entitlement and positive motivation from Herm that I’m not sure best served this team. While harsh, I like Haley’s approach of “do your fucking job or I will find someone who will” as opposed to Herm’s “don’t worry about it, just do better next time”. In the long run I think Clark made the right call, it’s just growing pains we’re going thru and y’all know I’m the first one to whimper when it hurts

First, let’s point out the obvious. If Peterson didn’t stupidly push Allen out of Kansas City, the Chiefs would have lined Allen up next to Glenn Dorsey, with Brandon Flowers and Brandon Carr shutting down at the corners. Woof.

No, because without the luxury of a second 1st round pick (the one we used on Albert), I’m fairly certain that #5 pick would have been a left tackle rather than Dorsey.

But let’s put Jared Allen aside for a moment.

Your second scenario is more likely, but I’m not sure a 4-3 line with Orakpo and Hali at the ends could stop the rushing offense of St. Mary’s High School =) – they’re both big OLB’s.

It’s clear that Carl and Herm weren’t on the same page, which means it was a mistake for Carl to hire him. Carl definitely drained the team with a lot of pathetic drafts before and during Vermeil’s coaching stint. And he blew it big time with Allen (and you forgot to include John Tait as a Carl special screw up). But I think Herm was still a LONG way from having a decent team. Or even a decent defense.

I think the 3-4 is the direction to go. I found it interesting that Haley was big for the 3-4 because of he found it the most difficult to plan against. There are several teams that are moving to the 3-4, but I don’t know of any that are moving from it to the 4-3. It’s a tough change, especially with all the voids we had on defense anyway, but sticking with the 4-3 and Herm for longer would mean we could climb to being a mediocre team that makes the playoffs once in a while and never advances more than one round. At least the new regime holds out the possibility of being more.

for the great discussion topic as it’s something I’ve thought a lot about this year. Plus, if I read one more report about Crennel, one more retarded mock draft, or one more FA fantasy wishlist I was going Todd Haley Brodie Croyle style

but, the answer is a pretty resounding YES it will be better, IMO

If we spent all our early picks on defense as you suggest our offense would suck ass.. We’d still have Damein Macintosh at LT, Larry Johnson at RB, and Brodie Croyle at QB

So back to the post.. the answer is yes. As of 2009 the 4-3 would have been better, but it wouldn’t matter because we’d have no foundation for our offense so we’d never win games anyway. But I’ll stretch the issue a bit and argue that the 4-3 is only better on paper..

There is only one coach in the entire NFL that runs the Tampa 2 successfully, that being Ron Meeks (Indy) who recently resigned. It was an awesome defense in the late 90’s- early millenium but it has pretty much died since considering O coordinators have found a way to dink and dunk down the field exploiting the "bend but don’t break philosophy.

The 3-4 on the other hand is a defense that has withstood the test of time. The 3-4 has been around the NFL since the mid 70’s (funny enough it was the Patriots who bought it to the NFL) and 11 of the 32 NFL teams run it today.. The Tampa 2 is near extinction with Buffalo in the middle of an overhaul and the resignation of Meeks, only Houston is left standing (Although you could argue the Bears as well, but that still only leaves two teams).

And if Herm was still here, so too would be Krumrie and the glaring 2008/2009 DLine sack totals he left behind.

Pass.

But I have to disagree on one thing. If Allen stayed, then Dorsey wouldn’t be here. We would have been more likely to draft Ryan Clady.

I’ve also considered this. If Allen would have stayed, then the landscape would be far, far, far, far different. Who knows? Maybe we would have won 3 or 4 more games in 2008 with him, and Herm and Carl kept their jobs. Maybe They get fired anyway and Pioli comes in and leaves the 4-3 intact, since a NFL worst sack record would have never happened in 2008 with Allen here. Plus a stud super star pass rusher would probably cause Pioli to leave well enough alone and continue building around Allen and the 4-3.

But it’s all in hind sight. The 3-4 is here, and I get the impression that a beast NT and a good LB or two will vault us into a top 15 defense. Only time will tell.

who cares? We will never ever know if Herm’s D would have become good. All we will ever know is that it sucked.

And again with the Herm youth movement BS? Why does CP get all the blame for the bad drafts and Herm gets all the credit for teh good ones? CP never gave up control of personnel decisions.

Sigh. Live in the past if you must…

is that the farther one goes back and the more things one changes, the less one will be able to guess at what might have resulted.

Excuses
Sure, it’s an interesting thought excercise to wonder if Herm’s defense would have been better than the one fielded this year under Haley’s authorship. But not very useful or intellectually honest.

The truth is that the defense was close to inept under Vermeil, overburdened by that glorious offense. The truth is that the defense was STILL inept under Herm Edwards, and he was supposedly a defensive coach. The truth is that the NFL found an answer to the Cover 2 and Herm didn’t recognize that, and if he did he didn’t show it. The truth is that Herm had THREE YEARS to put together his defense of choice and failed utterly.

One can look in hindsight at the Jared Allen trade and bemoan the reasoning (and mentioning LJ as a corollary), but the truth is the trade itself was brilliant. Just because the resulting picks have not yet panned out, and may never, does not mean the trade wasn’t sound on its face. I like Jared Allen and love his pinpoint rushing of the quarterback, but he wasn’t worth two first round draft picks. He’s a great RDE, but the flaw in his game is obviously run coverage and only in a system like MIN’s can it be masked. Whether or not LJ was kept is irrelevant, especially when mentioning LJ’s off the field issues and conveniently ignorning Allen’s at the time. Please also recall the cost of Jared Allen to Minnesota, which might have had young, first-round quarterback waiting to replace Favre when he remembers he’s 60 years old.

So, to refute Mr. Yoon’s commentary in total:
1. Alternative History is best left to fiction writers. Pretending/hoping/guessing at what other events might have taken place does not remove us from our current reality.

2. Herm’s defense was not good and wasn’t going to get better. Blame it on Cunningham, blame it on the departure of Jared Allen, blame it on Carl, blame whoever you want. Herm had three years to install a proper defense and couldn’t get it done.

3. The Jared Allen trade was a good trade, even if it didn’t result in what we wanted.

4. Asking the question in the headline and then answering it in your closing with, “it’s too soon to tell” is a complete cop-out. We have the data. We have the facts. This defense is ALREADY better than the one it replaced. It is young, it is stocked with 1-2-3 round draft picks that are and will soon be playing out of their minds.

5. The idea that Pioli is “trying too hard” to make KC into another New England is silly on its face. Just like we can’t go to war with a tactic (terrorism) but we can with people (jihadists), no GM is actually trying to make their team into Patriot Dynasty the Second, but replicating the strategy upon which it was built. In this case, we actually have the architect of said strategy directing our team. Suggesting that Pioli told Haley that we’re going to run the 3-4 because the “Patriots did it!” is just ridiculous. He did it because its a sound strategy that works in this time of quick outs, quick slants, and the newer wildcat packages we’ve seen lately.

“Analysis”
I’m actually shocked at this article man. Come ON. To provide better analysis we must assess the current situation and collect the facts we have, asking what we know and what we want to know. Instead, this analysis takes a position of defending a former head coach, placing blame on the GM with which he worked, and then ignoring the very question that the supposed analysis was supposed to answer.

Well I’ll do your work for you. Pioli’s Haley’s (Crennel’s) 3-4 will be much better than Herm’s 4-3.

After all, we kept a majority of the 4-3 starters we had last year and brought nobody in that had significant 3-4 experience to coach the players. No wonder we had trouble. Regardless, I think a head coach has to run the system he’s comfortable with rather than let the coaches and players dictate the system. The 3-4 was a very poor fit last year but a few people did make the transition successfully. And this year, we certainly have a head start in completing that transition.

and will do better than the 4-3 in the long run

Think its safe to say Pioli likes the Patriot way. I also think its safe to say we don’t have a chance at Wilfork. The Pats cleared space in their cap for him just in case a new CBA is worked out. What are the chances the Chiefs (Pioli) go after Richard Seymore? With Romeo here it makes sense.

Eric Berry 4 prez

You’ve got a lot of interesting conversation going here. I still don’t agree with your idea, but it’s made for a great comment thread!

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again. Carl Peterson had every right to call Jared Allen a young man at risk, because he absolutely was. Allen straightened out his life out of sheer spite, and would have never resigned with us, because he held a grudge against Peterson for telling the truth