<blockquote class="twitter-tweet"><p lang="en" dir="ltr"><a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/Chiefs?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#Chiefs</a> LB coach Brendan Daly told me ... &quot;I don&#39;t even want to think about life without Nick Bolton.&quot; <br><br>Bolton is set to be a free agent after Sunday. His photographic memory (yes you read that correctly) combined with his recognition ability and his communication skills make…</p>&mdash; James Palmer (@JamesPalmerTV) <a href="https://twitter.com/JamesPalmerTV/status/1887186596858110223?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">February 5, 2025</a></blockquote> <script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>

He’s not going anywhere….

We may not like the $$$, but they are very clearly going to prioritize him over Trey and Reid.

Bolton is this years Chirs Jones. For some reason draftubators had a weird obsession with letting Jones walk so they could cosplay as GM's and give terrible replacements. They are doing the same with Bolton

SB 34.
Lewis, currently an analyst on Fox Sports, was celebrating with a group of friends the morning after Super Bowl 34, during which the Rams beat the Titans on Jan. 30, 2000. Then a linebacker with the Ravens, Lewis had only gone through four years in the NFL, all in Baltimore.
Early in the morning of Jan. 31, 2000, two men were stabbed and killed by members of Lewis' entourage during a brawl in Atlanta.

Remains to be seen obviously, but I think that would be the right move.

Trey has priced himself out of our market.

I was surprised to find out Reid is only 27. Feels like the dude should be, like, 31.. I wouldn’t mind them working something out with him but I feel like he’s a bit more replaceable than Bolton.

I like to let Trey walk and dress like Kevin Costner wtf is it to you pal?

Every player with 550+ Tackles and 35+ TFLs in their first 4 seasons in the league since 2000:

- Luke Kuechly (3 All-Pro Selections & 3 Pro Bowls in first 4 seasons)

- Patrick Willis (3 All-Pro Selections & 4 Pro Bowls in first 4 seasons)

- NaVorro Bowman (3 All-Pro Selections & 2 Pro Bowls in first 4 seasons)

- Lavonte David (1 All-Pro Selection & 1 Pro Bowl in first 4 seasons)

- Nick Bolton (0 All-Pro Selections & 0 Pro Bowls in first 4 seasons)

Is Tranquil a free agent? I hope so I can't wait to get rid of his ass. If Conner, Cook or Nazeeh aren't getting picked on it's always Tranquil.

I've always thought is was funny when they made such a big deal out of Pacheco calling for Tranquil in the pass blocking drill in camp. Dude is soft AF. you want a challenge blocking someone try Bolton or Chenal, because small WRs can block Tranquil's weak ass.

No - we're locked into him for one more year unless someone wants to trade for him. He has like $7 million guaranteed this year.

Tranquill is gonna be around a year longer than he needs to be. It's been fine having him this year, but I feel like he's declined enough this year that we'll kinda regret leaning heavily into him next year.

He's no reasonable option to replace Bolton, that's for damn sure.

Tranquil was fine last year running next to Willie and Nick but even then....I dunno. Wasn't a huge fan.

I will never understand why they paid Tranquil and let Gay walk, but obviously they know wtf they're doing. It really makes you wonder is there was some truth to that rumor that claimed we had a trade in place for Gay and we signed Tranquil to take his place.

Gay seemingly always had “something” going on. Either a lingering injury or off the field issue.

I would’ve welcomed him back cheap like he signed for. It sounded like there was speculation at the time that someone might overpay for that pure ability. I wouldn’t want to do that though.

Pretty simple, Tranquill can call the defense in a pinch if Bolton has to go out. Gay wasn't close to being able to do that.

It stinks that Drue seems a step slower this year. Have to hope he can bounce back from maybe some sort of lingering issue cause there's no good reason for him to be losing steps in his 20s.

would love to have Willie back at the right price

Go to the 21 or so minute mark. And listen at what Watson says about Spags and Bolton........

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VwjC...ShermanPodcast

He was a team captain last night. He’s getting paid.

And quite honestly he’s pretty goddamn valuable considering the teams that we are playing with these running backs.

Big reason why Saquon did nothing last night

The “pay Bolton or Smith” question seems to have a pretty easy answer right now.

It was never an equal choice.

The projected market salary for Smith will be way higher than Bolton's.

I'm not paying either. I'm paying money for a LT/

I'm still putting a cap on how high I want to pay a non coverage LB though.

No. We need to spend the resources on fixing the offense.

And we will need to replace them if they are not signed.

This really is a repeat of the 'Get a franchise quarterback' years.

They don't grow on trees, fellas.

The 'pay money for an LT' means throwing a huge deal at Cam Robinson. That's really it -- there just isn't going to be much else on the FA market.

Anybody else will be in that 2nd tier of averageish veteran LTs who aren't going to make enough money to make Bolton cost prohibitive.

This is such a simplistic way to look at things.

To me find a LT and a lot of the rest falls into place. Rice comes back. Maybe try and find a 3rd round RB, Travis makes his call and adjust accordingly.

On the other hand the dee did a great job but it really is a lot dependent on Chris being able to blow up the other teams line. Not sure that is going to continue down the road.

And if we pay $20 million/yr for Cam Robinson (which is what he'll cost) he'll get DESTROYED 'round these parts by about week 4.

If you want a truly great LT, you have to develop him.

If you want a guy whos adequate and overpaid, you sign your FA veteran.

"We just have to fix the LT" is really the same as "We just need a franchise QB" -- it's so much easier said than done.

What people are advocating at the LT position appears to be the Derek Carr approach to fixing the QB position. You go out there and pay way too much for someone you know isn't actually GOOD...but at least he isn't awful. And then you hope that things work out well elsewhere on the roster.

And that's not even an indefensible approach -- but don't act like it's an obviously right one either.

I'm going to say something extremely unpopular right now. Kingsley is the type of LT we need. If he doesn't develop, someone like him has to. That's the only way we are going to get a top-flight LT.

No it doesn't.

Because again, from about week 3 to week 11, Wanya Morris was...fine. Not great, but adequate.

And the offense was still mediocre at best.

LT took all the blame because of how catastrophically the position imploded on 3 separate instances this year, but in between those implosions we weren't exactly setting the world on fire offensively despite getting solid play from LT and well above average play from the other 4 combined positions on the OL.

It's not the panacea people are arguing.

I don’t think Kingsley is the answer but he has LT measurables.

I still remember seeing those charts where we gave him basically no help and didn’t adjust to the shorter passing game.

That still makes zero sense to me, because the Chiefs gave Morris and Thuney more help and adjusted the play calling. I understand refusing to change your system for one guy, but that’s what we ended up doing anyway.

We essentially wasted any chance to develop Kingsley and made LG an abomination in the process.

It’s baffling to me that the Chiefs had one expectation for Kingsley but then made life easier on the guys who replaced him.

And I remember how bad Hendrickson beat him, but that guy had 17.5 sacks.

Kingsley was far from his only victim.

I've said as much as I feel inclined to say about how we handled the LT/LG thing down the stretch this year over in the Humphries thread.

My position is known and the cake is now baked. I don't care for what we did and in the end things couldn't have gone much worse at the worst possible time.

That said, I don't think Humphries would've changed anything meaningful. MAYBE had he not pulled his hammy and had those 6 weeks or so to get into football shape and get used to the offense and his teammates.

But he didn't. I think we got it wrong, but I don't think that's why we shit the bed.

I think the most concerning thing about that is that it seemed to destroy Kingsley mentally. He never recovered.

Possibly, but that goes back to my original point.

Why not give a rookie LT some help and adjust the playcalling? Why wait until you bench him and then give the replacements that help?

Maybe that situation could’ve been avoided entirely.

At least Kingsley has some upside. I don’t see that with Morris. Thuney is clearly a stopgap.

It’s just very confusing to me.

People just cant wrap there heads around the fact that Mahomes has not been playing at his standard for 2 whole regular seasons.

Two years ago it was all the WRs fault. This year it was blame the LT, even though Wanya played at least as well as Donovan Smith did the previous year.

I have no desire to watch any of that SB from last night, so I can't really say who ****ed up the most. How much did Mahomes hold onto the ball too long? Did he miss wide open WRs? Was the OL the sole reason for the slaughter?

Like I said, I have no desire to watch any of that game, but I will eventually and then I'll know who to blame.

Agreed. He played well last night and we probably pay him to stay.

They have also coached a lot of his dynamic ability out of him, he plays much more like just a standard QB.

I think on the Chiefs second drive, Mahomes had time and tried to go deep.

He did this little pump fake. Then pulled the ball down and dumped it off to Juju (I think).

I had a bad feeling after that. We didn’t get a good replay, but my assumption is that he had someone come open but couldn’t pull the trigger.

That hesitation won’t work. You have to take the shots and connect. That will help negate the pressure.

Mahomes looked like shit from the opening whistle. Way off the mark even before the OL decided it was let the Eagles front 4 tee off on Mahomes day.

No explosion, worst RB room in football, old slow WR’s, 5 LT’s.

They’ve done a great job with Rashee and Worthy. They need make this offseason about the trenches and a couple more explosive playmakers

Ultimately it was ALL of that.

But in a game of that magnitude, the one thing you should be able to take off the table is your all-universe QB missing plays that could stabilize your offense early in the game.

The 2nd half was just such a write-off. It really didn't matter at that point and barely resembled an actual football game.

But in that first half, Mahomes didn't do enough to help his OL. His OL didn't do enough to make things easier for Mahomes and the receivers weren't doing enough to get open.

A LOT of credit goes to the Eagles defense, to be honest. Their DBs played well and their DL played with their intensity turned up to 11. At that point there was one guy on the field for us who could pull a couple of plays from the fire and give everything a chance to stabilize.

And he didn't do that.

In the end, we got outplayed. That's really all there is to it. Their best plays were better than our best plays. Our worst plays were more catastrophic than their worst plays. That's why it's so hard to point to any specific cause - the entire offense just failed across the board.

<blockquote class="twitter-tweet"><p lang="en" dir="ltr">An example of just heaving it to Worthy EARLY in the game...<br><br>Why is Mahomes not just ripping it here? Just let him run under the ball. He had time. Just throw it man. <a href="https://t.co/pcyLyUO6Io">https://t.co/pcyLyUO6Io</a></p>&mdash; Conner Christopherson (@Conner_DKC) <a href="https://twitter.com/Conner_DKC/status/1888987968393609414?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">February 10, 2025</a></blockquote> <script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>

This is that play, it's 1 on 1 and Mahomes wouldn't pull it. Like has been said, all of the "coaching" is at fault for this, he won't take chances because they've coached him to be risk adverse, to not throw guys open. If dudes aren't wide ass open he'll clutch it, and check it off.

Damn it. I was kinda hoping it was just blanketed.

I think several people agree with this. More will come around as the year gets going. He's got the traits. I'd still chase another in the draft and hopefully have book end LT/RT. Kind of like our WR group right now. We should be absolutely set with Rice and Worthy.

The management of Kingsley this year just makes zero sense to me.

If you’re going to provide more help and a short passing game for his replacements, why not give him the same?

As crazy as it sounds, it might be time for the Chiefs to spend LESS on the offense.

Hear me out.

If you are not trading up in Rd 1 to get Simmons at LT, then what's the difference between a last 1st round OT and what you already have on the roster?

I don't want to spend what it would take in FA dollars on Cam Robinson to get the same result we just experienced.

If Travis retires he retires. I'm not going to freak out and try and find a replacement because you are never going to replace that guy.

We spend real money on Mahomes, Taylor, Thuney, and Humphrey. Thats it.

I'd rather spend FA money on the defense, whether that's Wharton, Reid, CB, or whatever than spend a pile of money on Cam Robinson another questionable LT.

First off, great ****ing coverage from Quinyon Mitchell here.

But yes Mahomes should have taken the shot. If anything it would have forced Fangio to adjust

<div style="width:500px;max-width:100%;"><div style="height:0;padding-bottom:56.4%;position:relative;"><iframe width="500" height="282" style="position:absolute;top:0;left:0;width:100%;height:100%;" frameBorder="0" src="https://imgflip.com/embed/9jqyn0"></iframe></div><p><a href="https://imgflip.com/gif/9jqyn0">via Imgflip</a></p></div>

Worth mentioning that our offense from week 3 to week 11 was without our top two WRs and our top RB got injured somewhere along the way. LT play may have been fine but our skill players were all broken for a long stretch of this season.

What bothered me in real time was Mahomes clearly thinking about it, pump faking and checking down.

It was clear right then that he was going to think himself into trouble.

Fine with paying him if he ages well.

Yeah, their secondary played really well.

When they didn't, we didn't make 'em pay for it.

They simply beat the brakes off us and I don't see what else to say about it. They were better across the board. I can't think of a position group for KC that outplayed the Eagles group. Their special teams even outplayed ours.

It was a top to bottom ass-kicking.

I do wish we'd stop saying our DL played poorly, though. This idea that we never got pressure on Hurts is just wrong. A) We were playing very very gap sound in an attempt to stop the Eagles rushing attack and it worked to perfection. B) We did get pressure on Hurts and when that happened, he handled the pressure better than Mahomes did, either by running for yardage or standing in and delivering the pass. And Hurts typically got juuuuust enough time for our coverage to break down. Even McDuffie wasn't immune.

We just got beat. Everywhere.

But the DL does deserve some credit for playing its ass off.

We didn't play that bad all year.-Travis Kelce

Yeah, if he just puts that 60 yards in the air, Worthy was starting to get away from Mitchell and Mahomes did have the time to do it. And was looking right at it.

"If I'm even, I'm leavin'..."

That's kinda how we needed to view Worthy there. As Mahomes looked at the play, Mitchell WAS alongside Worthy, but you want to see him trust Worthy's speed there because with a good throw, Worthy has the play made.

Might've changed things, especially if its housed.

But I kinda doubt it. Fangio was having success sending 4 and playing zone behind it. Not sure why he'd have done anything differently because one time the Chiefs got Worthy isolated in man and smoked him. He'd have just stuck with the zone stuff that was otherwise wrecking us.

Worthy was covered on the long TD. He caught that ball because he got that extra step right at the end of the play. It CAN be done, Pat just needs to let it rip.

I mean it's a designed shot play. Kelce's whole job is to put the safety in conflict and that's exactly what happened. Nobody else is even running a route to speak of.

That's a simple high/low 2-man game and the throw is based on the safety.

The safety sunk on Kelce -- as soon as that happens, the ball HAS to come out. Complete or not, the odds of a pick are damn near zero.

Like I said in the GDT -- Mahomes wasn't running the offense. That play is a perfect example of it. That play design got him the look, we KNOW he saw the look...then he pulled it down and freelanced for really no reason at all.

He was bad Sunday -- no two ways about it. Nobody helped him out much, but it was obviously different than the Bucs Super Bowl. His team killed him that night and he was the only thing that was working.

On Sunday, he was as big a part of the problem as anyone.

A mental reset was needed. The players have a long offseason to think about it.

Hopefully they use it as motivation.

If I see Kelce come back with another gut though, I’ll be concerned.

Has to start with your leaders.

The Eagles did it multiple times on the outside. And beat McDuffie, one of the best in the game, doing it. Sometimes you have to trust your WRs to go get the ball. Other teams do it, Mahomes just doesn't.

He exacerbated it to an insurmountable degree. Looked like early 2024 Mahomes where he'd play gunshy for most of the game only to yeet an inexplicably bad ball that got picked.

You wish there wouldn't have been that 2 week break.

I think they came up for air a bit after making it to the SB. And the fact that they've been running on grit and adrenaline finally hit them.

It was like 19 weeks worth of pressure all impacted them at once. As they were in-season, they seemed to be able to tune it out because there was always the next job and the next step.

I just wonder if that extra break didn't suddenly make that burden they've carried start to feel really really heavy.

Something has to explain going out there and looking as bad as they've looked at any time in the Mahomes era.

Yeah, you’d think some time off would help these older guys. But look at the results.

Offense starts to really show some life against the Steelers. They get time off. Then they look lost against Houston in the playoffs.

Offense again shows some life against Buffalo in a strong Mahomes performance. They get time off. Then they look lost against the Eagles.

I think you are absolutely spot freaking on. You could just see it Mahomes' eyes. He just cracked mentally, and who in the living hell could blame him? On top of being completely outmanned by a far superior roster, he had basically 7 years worth of pressure all hit him at once. The magnitude of what he was trying to accomplish finally clicked in. Once that happened, it was basically already over.

Same with CJ, you saw it a few times on the sideline. They just couldn't take it anymore, and the Eagles were playing completely loose with absolutely nothing to lose. The results speak for themselves.

Mahomes has never trusted his o-line all year long, and now on the biggest stage against a superior d-line, he's going to overthink it and second guess and not take the shots, and not clearly see the secondary in front of him and throw pics. What you saw from Pat Mahomes last night was the fact that he was human and he had very little confidence even before the game started, and it only worsened as the game went on.

Heck, I'll go on the record and say that Mahomes has never really trusted any O line in front of him since starting.

This is why I fear he may not age well. He relies on his quick twitch escape abilities rather than elite pocket presence. Mahomes has the fastest times for the agility and quickness drills at the combine despite a slow 40 time.

They were NOT lost against Houston. They scored on 5 of 7 drives. 4.3 YPC and 7.1 YPA.

Time off wasn't a factor.

As long as Spags is here, Bolton will be here. So I Hope a long time.

Yeah -- I don't think the Chiefs offense was as good as you seemed to be trying to convince yourself of (presumably to talk yourself into Thuney at LT) but they never felt like they were just completely out of sorts.

They just seemed like they were trying to get by with a limited gameplan against a tough pass rush. And ultimately Houston gave them Kelce so they took it. They spammed an easy button.

This game was different. And I don't think it was specifically the time off -- I think it was the time with little to do where the gravity of the situation finally landed. They'd been able to ignore the weight of history all season because it was still largely hypothetical. And then for two weeks there it was, right in front of them.

And they can say all they want that "the job wasn't finished" but I think they put so much drive and focus into getting to the SB and the chance for the 3-peat that the time off before just allowed some of those pressures to sink in.

Spags got Veach to resign Anthony Hitchens so I’m sure he will be pushing for Bolton.


Just bad cap management to overpay an off ball linebacker not great in coverage.

Yes. Guys like Brady or Manning had no mobility but they would step up more in the pocket rather than get happy feet and look to run. Being more mobile can be a hindrance at times when you try to bail early on pockets.

I can't remember them trying it much the entire season other than a couple times. Like why not? You drafted the fastest guy in combine history and you have Patrick Mahomes. I thought the entire point was to stretch the field and threaten the defense vertically. I get that teams played 2 deep safeties a lot and our protection was ass almost every snap. Even still, I expected to see it more than we did.

LOL fangio's not adjusting. That's not what he does. And that's not man defense, that's zone-match. The defensive back matches with the receiver when he runs vertical and their nickle back handles underneath routes in zone and the safety is supposed to provide help over the top but he's too shallow trying to cover Kelce. This was a massive **** up by Mahomes and exemplifies why the Eagles defense isn't the end-all-be-all that people make it out to be. Those safeties and their linebackers can be had. Their rookies had it too easy too.

It's like Pat wants his guys to be college wide open or else he doesn't throw it.

Maybe playing with Tyreek and prime Kelce spoiled him a bit as they were often college wide open.

He needs to adjust his expectations a bit and realize that if Worthy is one on one and even with a corner he has got to let it rip and let him go make a play.

That's a coaching emphasis, and as I said Nagy was trying to curb Patrick's play to be more conservative like Alex. "No,no,no, good play" - Matt Nagy concerning Mahomes helming the offense

Patrick just has to take that shot in that situation, if anything for his own confidence. Compare his play in SB54 before and after WASP, and in SB58 before and after his TD to MVS. He’s a guy who lives off of that adrenaline and energy - and I’d argue his TD to Kelce in 57 got him on from the get go.

Look, I’ve said it already, but I’m not sure there’s a QB in the NFL who gets us to a win last night with our line being caved in like it was and so many of our receivers getting blanketed in intermediate routes, but if we were going to win, it was going to be Patrick going into assassin gunslinger mode and keeping his eyes downfield and pulling the trigger on his first open target despite getting smashed in the backfield.

He willed the team to wins this way a few times in the back half of the 2020 season as our line sustained more and more injuries. The win against the Saints Brees team stands out in particular as he got beat like a drum by Hendrickson but kept taking shots downfield and ended up pulling us to a win.

My only hope is that the last TD of the game (which had 67 air yards, his personal record and a Super Bowl record) gives him the confidence to pull the trigger on these early and often next year - and hopefully we have something other than dogshit at LT to consistently let it happen.

<blockquote class="twitter-tweet"><p lang="en" dir="ltr"><a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/Chiefs?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#Chiefs</a> Nick Bolton won’t have the robust market many anticipated.</p>&mdash; Chad Forbes (@NFLDraftBites) <a href="https://twitter.com/NFLDraftBites/status/1897101682280120585?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">March 5, 2025</a></blockquote> <script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>

That’s just fine. His home is here.

that's another reason to bring him back, he has more value to us than other teams and he should appreciate that now that the market is thinner. He is the defensive signal caller and a great asset against the run.