FanPost

What does Pioli mean by the "Right 53"


I have this thought. A nagging thought now. What does Pioli mean by the "Right 53" Some teams are built with a starting lineup and then the backups that do the dirty jobs and heaven forbid in an injury situation play spot starters. Well does Pioli build teams like that? Or maybe he has no true 1st line starters but a whole cadre of players that fill spots as needed. Maybe a squad of specialists. Players that are great against the run and weak on the pass defense. Pass Rushers when needed and Run stuffers at other times. This kind of grouping would require a whole roster of different talents and a lot of them would be cheap. Real Cheap in cost cause the rest of the League likes to have a starting lineup and a bunch of bench players that never see the field. I have maybe two examples to back up my idea.

The first would be the 2009 linebacking corp. We started Corey Mays and Demorrio Williams, who in obvious passing situations were replaced by Derrick Johnson and Jovan Belcher. Most NFL teams don't sub out the ILB corp for pass run situations. They have Starters that play in both circumstances. Now maybe that was just caused by Pendergast and not a Pioli/Haley preference.

The second would be the whole philosophy of upgrading personnel that the New England Patriots pursued. Seems to me that the Patriots always have a ton of picks in the draft. The reasons: They always were willing to move older players that they felt were replaceable (thus a lot of Compensation picks) and also picks due to trades. The only way they could do this is too have players ready to step into the vacant spots and play as well as the player just departed. How do you do that?

Well one way is to have a lot of situational players and play them all. The entire "Right 53" Of Course you have some everydown players mixed in. You would have to have a strong cadre of players on the interior and whether they play every down or not the are interchangable parts. Not Stars all by themselves but collectively WIN games and thus become those players that other teams feel can make a difference for them when they become available. We have experienced that to a degree with every Patriot cast-off being a possible signing. To Pioli they were part of a machine before and could be small cogs to start the New Kansas City Chiefs franchise in the mold that he knows best. Weis and Crennel were the master machinists in a previous franchise rebuild.

So to the point of the matter. Are we going to draft Stars or more Cogs in the machine? The "Right 53" I have given up on trying to figure out WHO Pioli will take. IMO, Pioli at 6:30 CST Thursday is not going to be totally sure either. He will have his board and his scouting reports and will wait to see who is there to pick. He then will weigh his options. If he decides we need a new LT bad enough, He will probably draft 2, just like we took 2 DE's last year. I have NO fear that Pioli will use Math to make sure that he gets what he needs. Looking at Scott Pioli's past drafts is very interesting to me. He seems to always generate 2-3 more picks than he should have every year. In 2010, We have 1 extra pick but all of the picks we have are in the Top 150 picks of possible players. I was looking at the Scout list of players and there star ratings, this years draft according to Scouts has 157 players rated 4 and 5 stars. We don't have to take any project this year if we don't want to. No reaches for talent. Our 1st three picks should be all of the highest caliber 5 star players.

Geaux Chiefs

This is a FanPost and does not necessarily reflect the views of Arrowhead Pride's writers or editors. It does reflect the views of this particular fan though, which is as important as the views of Arrowhead Pride writers or editors.