Not to be a Veach homer, but people are acting like we were reaching for receivers when better options were available. Fans are so quick to forget the storylines that were happening during the draft and players that had “red flags” going into it. I think everyone needs a quick reminder of the surrounding news of our wide receivers and why we drafted them.
Disclaimer: I also have been disappointed about the wide receiver play this season, and am not trying to say it’ll magically get better. This is just a retrospective on what people thought of the wide receivers Veach has drafted at the time.
Let’s start with Mecole Hardman. We had just come off the devastating loss to the Patriots in the AFC Championship and our WR room looked a lot different. We had Hill, Watkins, and DRob as our top three receivers and wanted more speed. So, we drafted a deep threat receiver in Hardman to give our offense a little more edge in the deep threat that wasn’t Hill. A second round pick is a lot to spend on a gadget guy, but it was pretty much our only need on offense that year.
PFF liked this pick and thought Mecole Hardman would slide in well with our offense.
https://www.pff.com/news/draft-2019-nfl-draft-grades-for-all-32-teams
They also had DK Metcalf rated higher than Hardman, but at the time, we didn’t need a big body receiver who could catch. And there were some question marks around Metcalf’s speed and route running. In hindsight, those questions were dumb, but the chiefs offense was in love with speed and wanted more of it.
Next pick, Sky Moore. Moore looked great headed into the draft. And is the reason I’m making this post. If I had a dollar for every time the “We should’ve drafted Pickens instead” comment was made in this sub, I’d have enough money to buy the chiefs and trade for a receiver myself. Chiefs fans who are critical of Veach seem to use this as their golden rule of why Veach can’t draft receivers. So, let’s take a look at what PFF said about this draft:
“Pick Grade: Elite
Moore was a first-round prospect in PFF’s eyes, once again giving the Chiefs one of the biggest steals of the NFL draft. The highest-graded wide receiver of the 2021 college football season wasn’t any of the Power Five top prospects — it was Western Michigan’s Skyy Moore. The 5-foot-10, 195-pound receiver’s 26 broken tackles after the catch tied for the most among wide receivers in 2021, and he ranked in the 95th percentile in separation percentage. Despite his smaller stature, Moore had no issue handling press coverage on the outside, ranking top-five in yards per route run on those reps last season at 3.58. The cherry on top is his strong hands — the Western Michigan pass-catcher checked in with the largest hands of anyone at the Combine (10.25 inches) and dropped just three of his 125 targets in 2021 while catching eight of his 13 contested opportunities.
95% of PFF Users like this pick! PFF Users picked: WR – Skyy Moore”
Everyone thought Moore would be better than he is, check every source there is on that draft and everyone loved this pick. Let’s contrast that to Pickens PFF review:
“Pick Grade: Good
Pickens carries some risk given his medical history and unknowns off the field, but there’s no denying he possesses true “X” receiver potential. He’s physical with a massive catch radius, elite ball skills and good acceleration. Pickens earned an incredible 88.0 receiving grade as a true freshman before injuries derailed the last couple of years.
84% of PFF Users like this pick! PFF Users picked: T – Bernhard Raimann”
https://www.pff.com/news/draft-2022-nfl-draft-grades-73-day-2-picks-round-2-round-3
The truth is Pickens had a lot of injury concerns and the Chiefs were understandably risk averse when it came to injuries at the time. But this is all a moot point because Pickens was drafted two picks before Moore, so the Chiefs couldn’t have drafted him even if they wanted to.
Moore was a great pick, he just didn’t pan out. Hardman was a good pick, he just didn’t pan out. Rice is a good pick, and looks like he may pan out.
This year has been frustrating, but let’s not act like Veach was reaching for receivers when there were better options available. If anything, our problem has been on coaching our young guys up, not on who we draft.
The “Hindsight Fallacy” is frequently a thing when people see that some other outcome would have been more favorable than a previous decision. Rather than cherry-picking the receivers that didn’t work out, I prefer to look at the other positions that have worked out splendidly.
The Chiefs play for some sort of championship pretty much every year now. Meaning late first round picks (functionally second round picks) and a tight cap situation with the legends that have to be paid.
That we still consistently win (even a Superbowl!) in spite of this is good enough for me. They’ll solve the receiver issue, at some point. It’s a “rising tide raises all boats” position. One elite receiver and suddenly things greatly open up for everyone else (i.e. the current guys who look like 3-4 suddenly look like 2’s).