The Chiefs’ facelift is all Brett Veach ... with Andy Reid’s blessing, of course

If anything was clear about the state of the Chiefs after last season, it was that they had plateaued under coach Andy Reid.

In five seasons, Reid had gone 53-27 in the regular season to restore dignity, competitiveness and hope to the franchise in turmoil when he took over after the 2-14 fiasco in 2012. Sterling work, in fact.

But with another playoff cave-in, this time a 22-21 loss to Tennessee sprinkled with bizarre officiating but most notable for a botched 21-3 lead, the Chiefs fell to 1-4 in the postseason under the former Philadelphia Eagles head coach.

With exasperation seeping into expectations, the Chiefs suddenly were at a different sort of crossroads.

Meanwhile, if anything was unclear about the willingness and ability of not-yet-40 general manager Brett Veach to engage meaningful changes in his first year on the job, that’s been answered emphatically in the months since.

Forty of the 90 men on the preseason roster were acquired in the offseason. Average age: 25.2.

And that only starts to tell the story of their facelift.

“You look at the roster, and you go, ‘He’s putting his stamp on it now,’ ” Reid said.

With the boldness of someone Reid jokes still “looks like he’s about 14” but judgment and diligence that he figures is well beyond his years.

“He’s relentless … (and) that energy isn’t coming out of a can or something,” Reid said. “That’s real, and he is that way 24-7. He goes and goes and goes.”

So does the trust between them, built on a long-term, day-in, day-out relationship since Reid hired Veach in Philadelphia. And it’s imperative in the Chiefs’ operation.

While Reid and former GM John Dorsey had known each other for years, spoke of wanting to work together and collaborated on the formula for the turnaround here, it’s hard to believe Dorsey would have been fired in mid-2017 if Reid had objected to it.

But despite some superficial initial skepticism about the reason Veach was hired, it’s also significant that Reid didn’t want him in place as a mere “yes man.”

He knows Veach has a special eye for talent, including being a major voice advocating for Patrick Mahomes in his previous job as co-director of player personnel, but also the disposition to be his own man.

“If he puts you in that position, it’s because he believes in you,” Veach said. ”And believing in somebody doesn’t mean, ‘I want to cross-check every single thing.’

“It means, ‘I believe in you, and you go do it.’ And I think that motivates me more than anything.”

So Veach was motivated to engineer a major makeover of a vulnerable defense — on which Veach deployed his first five draft picks — and to make key changes on offense.

Gone in the process are aging mainstays Derrick Johnson and Tamba Hali, volatile cornerback Marcus Peters and underappreciated quarterback Alex Smith.

In one swoop that signaled Veach had the makings of something special in him, the trade of Smith cleared the way for the Patrick Mahomes era to begin in earnest. It also brought in cornerback Kendall Fuller and a draft pick and freed up some funds for an offseason that featured the signings of receiver Sammy Watkins, linebacker Anthony Hitchens and defensive tackle Xavier Williams.

Part of the Chiefs’ massive turnover, which can’t be officially quantified until the cut-down to a 53-man roster on Sept. 1, also was about a change in culture — a term that everyone from Veach to owner Clark Hunt has mentioned in the last few weeks.

No one has spoken out in that context about Peters, who was traded to the Rams after a season of observable on-field tirades, squabbles with coaches and aversion to tackling.

Publicly, the Chiefs have remained vague about why they dealt him away, though Veach in March called it “a football decision” that had nothing to do with Peters not standing for the national anthem or some assumed mandate from Hunt.

What has been stressed instead is who has been added.

Culture and character are “something that’s very important to Brett Veach, and as he brought in players both in free agency and in the draft, he wanted to make sure that each of those players was going to be a positive contributor in terms of the character of the football team,” Hunt said.

Or as Veach put the job of shaping the team: “We’re going to infuse some youth in this roster, and we need guys who can fly around and play hard. And within those specific skills we’re looking for, also look for guys who are grown men who do things the right way.”

On one side of the ball, the effect will be a replenished defense likely featuring more than half its starting lineup changed.

Whether that makes for winning football, particularly in the postseason, remains to be seen: Another wobbly defensive season could indicate that a change is, and was, needed as much or more at defensive coordinator than in personnel. Coordinator Bob Sutton is still in charge of the defense.

But at least theoretically, a group anchored in the middle by another Veach acquisition from last year, linebacker Reggie Ragland, figures to be stronger against its past nemesis, the run.

On the other side, depending on the pace of Mahomes’ development, an offense that was among the most prolific in the NFL last year could be even more potent with Watkins as an added dimension beyond Tyreek Hill, Travis Kelce and Kareem Hunt.

“If you are an offensive coordinator with the mind that (Reid) has and the creativity that he likes to bring to this game — that gets you excited,” Chiefs president Mark Donovan said. “And that goes back to Brett and what he has done and how they work together.”

In the most practical sense, how they work together goes something like this: After they have what Veach calls “kind of a generic blueprinting dialogue,” Reid expects Veach and his staff to go “crank tape and crunch numbers and come up with ideas.”

The potential solutions don’t come from “trying to reinvent the wheel, or pull out some formula that no one knows about,” Veach said.

They stem from obsessive homework that includes keen attention to the sort of salary-cap ramifications that plagued Dorsey. By the time something is brought to Reid, he will know the case has been fully exhausted and vetted and more often than not will say, “Let’s do it.”

“That’s what makes him special,” Veach said. “He’s not a guy who’s a control freak.”

Veach is mindful of the meaning of that approach himself, saying his trust in others is as significant as his own instincts.

“I know that I’m able to bring a lot to the table,” he said. “But at the same time, I know that when I come to the table I don’t have every answer to every problem that we have.

“So you surround yourself with really good people, and you’re going to go in there and talk about things. I bring my knowledge and my energy to the table, but at the same time I defer to the people around who have other solutions to some problems that we’re having.

“Then we kind of just work things out together.”

Just over a year into the job now, Veach knows he still is growing into it in some ways and figures there are “probably still some scenarios I haven’t encountered yet.”

But he also knows he had excellent grounding from Dorsey and Reid, a former GM himself, each of whom allowed him strong input in the past and exposed him to so much to prepare him for this.

So there’s been no hesitance to put his stamp on the team and aggressively try to jolt the Chiefs through the ceiling they’ve hit.

However it plays out, that’s what this franchise needed rather than basically staying status quo and just hoping for better days ahead.

This story was originally published August 16, 2018 at 12:34 PM.