His run defense improved this year. His backside pursuit on runs was very good. Plus, you are overlooking his forced fumbles this year. Giving Mahomes extra possessions is huge. Pressures, hits, sacks, forced fumbles are extremely important to a team. Especially a team that has an explosive offense that jumps to a lead and can get its D in position to pin their ears back and rush the QB.

Hard to do that when teams are going to be running the ball right at Ford because he’s the weak spot.

Honest question, have you seen rushing numbers that indicate KC's rush defense was much weaker to his side of the field? I know the Pats ran a lot to their right, not at Ford.

The run d was terrible everywhere. Left, right, center, forward, backward sideways etc.

Ford isn't a good run defender. With his pass rush though, you just need him to be adequate

Looking at last year though with all the trades, the Chiefs need to be proactive there. If you could get a safety or a DL for a fifth rounder for instance, do it.

In terms of Ford, he led the league in pressures from the edge and was second in forced fumbles.

He had a damn fine year.

Now, it was a contract year, so i'd be extremely hesitant to pay that much for him, but the tag seems pretty likely.

In terms of Ford hes also like 27 years old. Youre basically paying a premium price for his late twenties/early thirties. Chiefs did that with Houston and Berry and got burned badly.

Yep and Ford comes with an early-career injury history that's actually worse than either one of them.

They already have two albatross contracts on the books (Houston and Berry). I wonder if how those played out will have any bearing on what they do with Ford.

Which is why nobody is talking about a long term deal.

It’s tag and trade or tag and take advantage of him playing his ass off for a contract again then tag and trade next year (or let him walk for a comp pick).

Andy has always been more conservative (as seen recently by his hire of Spags). He mentioned in the Nate Taylor article that he thinks it’s Super Bowl or bust in 2019.

He seems like the kind of guy who wants to keep as much talent as he can for this run instead of trying to fill that spot with an unknown rookie.

Starting to feel like their plan is approaching Houston about his contract, keeping Ford on the tag one more year, making some other cuts, signing 1 name FA and hitting the draft hard.

The only way that the Ford tag makes sense....is if Houston takes a pay cut. Otherwise....we aren't affording shit on the FA market.

I'm not sure that's necessarily a bad thing anyway.

They've gotta lock down some of their own guys first anyway but they haven't had the best luck with free agents anyway.

They spent big on them last offseason, so they may need a bit of a reset.

There are a ton of people here that say you absolutely cannot let him go, no matter the offer. They may not be talking about long-term deals now but the inevitable consequence of tagging him and not trading him is that they'll be pretty much forced next season to pay him or let him go. Tagging him again, at his age with his injury history, just isn't smart.

I’m only saying tag and trade if it’s possible. If not, you let him walk.