Salary Cap Boost A Huge Win For Chiefs
According to the latest reports, the 2014 salary cap is going to unexpectedly jump $10 million to $133 million for the 2014 season. It was previously expected that the cap would more or less hold steady at $123 million this year, putting many teams in a bind. If these reports or confirmed, it’s huge news for a Chiefs team that is hitting its stride.
First off, this is great news for the game itself.
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Earlier this month, it was revealed that NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell made $44.2 million in salary and bonuses last year. I thought that number was crazy, you thought that number was crazy. But, Marc Ganis, president of SportsCorp, a Chicago-based consulting firm, told USA Today at the time, that “The people who decided his performance warranted this compensation are the same people who are paying it, the 32 team owners. They decided that Goodell’s performance was worth a little more than $1 million for each of the teams — a very rational decision based on the extraordinary results Goodell has delivered for them.”
Hard to argue with that. The fact is that the NFL is one of the most profitable sports leagues in the world and it is growing at an accelerating rate. At those stratospheric corporate levels where revenues are in the billions, this is what you get paid for increasing margins substantially.
Not to be left out, the boon will extend to the players, who will be getting $320 million more in overall pay this season. But back to the Chiefs. According to the numbers at Over the Cap, the Chiefs have $12.458 million in cap room with this increase before any more cuts or restructurings of contracts. There’ll be plenty of time to discuss the specific moves that should be made this offseason, but the overall picture boils down to this:
With this amount of room, the Chiefs can sign (or re-sign) one valuable free agent like LT Branden Albert, WR Golden Tate, or WR/PR Dexter McCluster. Or, they could extend QB Alex Smith. Or, they could make a dozen smaller moves.
The point is that this suddenly opens the door to a wide range of possibilities, while the conversation up to this point has been about how the Chiefs would have to make do with the guys they had under contract and a pocket full of change to fill a few gaps.
With this kind of money, it’s not unreasonable to think that the team can make a run at S Jarrius Byrd for instance. Heck, there’s a good chance that the Chiefs could steal former Jayhawk CB Aqib Talib from Patriots, although it might be better served to look at snatching Dominique Rogers-Cromartie from Denver, thus weakening a rival in the process. These two rank as the #2 and #3 free agent cornerbacks according to PFF, just behind Brent Grimes who will surely stay in Miami.
If you were Chiefs GM John Dorsey, what would you do with $10 million you didn’t know you had?