Kyle Crabbs discusses the Kansas City Chiefs signing G Trey Smith to a 4-year $94m extension and how this indicates a paradigm shift in the game of football where the offensive line is a primary focus
00:00Trey Smith's contract extension with the Kansas City Chiefs is the latest example of the endless cycle that NFL teams find themselves in in pursuit of a championship.
00:12I'm Kyle Krabs with A to Z Sports, and you've probably heard the trope that positional value along the offensive line heavily favors the offensive tackles.
00:22And for a very long time, the dollars that the NFL put behind offensive tackles versus guards and centers suggested that that was absolutely true.
00:32But if you flip the calendar back a few decades and reflect on what the league looked like back then, you saw mauling offensive lines with three yards and a cloud of dust and a thirst to run the ball between the tackles.
00:43NFL has since become a pace and space game with lots of wide open offense and teams looking to manufacture explosive plays in the passing game.
00:53And it's that cat and mouse game that continues to go on year over year that makes the Trey Smith extension something that's worthwhile for Kansas City.
01:03The Chiefs face as much too high safety shell presentations and conservative defensive structures as any other team in the NFL because they have the league's best quarterback in Patrick Mahomes.
01:14And when that happens, you naturally get less bodies in the front, which makes it more attractive for you to take what the defense is giving you.
01:22And in that case for Kansas City, it has been running the football.
01:26And for Trey Smith, as somebody who has all the power in the world to create displacement and move you from point A to point B against your will, if teams are going to sit in two high safeties, Kansas City having Creed Humphrey, the league's highest paid center and Trey Smith, now the league's highest paid guard playing side by side next to each other.
01:45It gives them a force multiplier to attack teams up the middle in hopes that they can eventually pull that extra safety down into the box and create the space on the back end to attack and go after those explosive plays in the passing game.
01:59But there's also Patrick Mahomes' strength here and what he does as a quarterback within the pocket.
02:04He is very adept at making the first arriving pass rusher miss.
02:08He's silky smooth with his feet and how he slides within the pocket.
02:11That's hard to do when the pressure is coming up the middle in your face.
02:16But if somebody is attacking from a wider angle off the edge, it allows you the opportunity, especially with a high integrity pocket in front of you, to step up and then slide to extend and create plays outside of the general drop back structure of the play.
02:30And this is not just exclusive to Kansas City.
02:33Consider the Chicago Bears and their interior offensive line renovations trading for both Jonah Jackson and Joe Thune, plus signing Drew Dahlman in free agency on a $14 million per year contract to serve as the team's starting center.
02:47In the NFC North as well, the Green Bay Packers signed Aaron Banks to a $19 plus million per year contract to go with a top 100 pick in Sean Ryan.
02:56And Elton Jenkins, the team's marquee offensive lineman, who will be playing inside as well.
03:02In 2024, the Carolina Panthers gave out $153 million in total value to contracts for two offensive guards in Rob Hunt, who got $100 million of that commitment, and Damian Lewis from the Seattle Seahawks.
03:15The LA Rams drafted Steve Avila with a top 100 pick and then signed Jonah Jackson and also re-signed Kevin Dotson to make sure that they had a very robust interior trio as well.
03:29This is the trend that is growing across the league.
03:33The closing gap between the top paid tackles and the top paid guards should give you a little bit of inclination that the once-upon-a-time style of play to build an offensive line is coming back into the forefront because teams defensively are willing to play so conservatively with two high-safety presentations.
03:54And if they're going to give it to you, you might as well take it until they change.
03:59And once they change, you can go back to playing cat and mouse and trying to hit those explosive plays over the top.
04:05So the game within the game continues, and Kansas City, for their part, has doubled down, not only extending Creed Humphrey last year, but now locking in Trey Smith on a market reset at the guard position.