Chiefs Offseason: Replacing Sean Smith

There are certain conversation subjects that are always going to evoke strong emotions and reactions.  Religion, politics, Kanye West’s latest anything…and the NFL offseason.  Now, we should be relatively safe from three out of the four here on a football blog, but it’s pretty obvious that we are going to be thrust right in the middle of that last topic.  For all but two teams, the offseason is already here.  And that means the battle lines are being drawn on virtually every player on the roster.  Sean Smith is emerging as one of the more divisive ones.

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Last week, Arrowhead Addict’s Tarek Mavani put out a great piece explaining why the Chiefs needed to keep Sean Smith in house.  The argument centered around how the Chiefs simply did not have the people on the roster to replace him.  From that standpoint, Tarek is absolutely right.  There is no viable option on the Chiefs 2015 roster to replace Smith.  But here’s where I’m going to take a hard break from Tarek’s point of view…the Chiefs hired John Dorsey for a reason, and this is it.

The Financials

First off, retaining Sean Smith for the long haul is wildly impractical in a financial sense.  The Chiefs have done a great job of building the salary cap to absorb the blows of Alex Smith and Justin Houston.  However, with two large contracts already on the books, the Chiefs have to be careful about how they spend the rest of their money.  Already, a significant chunk has gone to Travis Kelce.  And we can expect the same for Eric Berry and either Jaye Howard or Dontari Poe.  Simply put, adding Sean Smith to all these other contracts could do more harm than good.

That point is backed up by some very inconvenient facts for Chiefs fans.  At the beginning of the season, Sean Smith made it abundantly clear that he had every intention of hitting Free Agency to get the best deal he can.  Right there we all need to understand that Smith will not take a discount.  He’s looking to make his money…and this is the best possible year for it.

The Free Agency market at cornerback is pathetic.  Sean Smith sits at the top of the board with Josh Norman, and then there is a significant drop off to the next group.  The Panthers have been pretty clear about their intentions to re-sign Norman, which means Sean Smith stands alone as king of the market.  How does that play to his favor?  Well, in an extremely weak market last year, Byron Maxwell became the fifth highest paid corner in the NFL with a six year, $63 million, contract.  Yeah, Byron Maxwell.  Sean Smith is going to blow right by that.  Smith’s performance the last two years puts him in the elite of the league…and he will be compensated as such.  In fact, if he takes anything less than Richard Sherman’s four year, $56 million, deal then he should fire his agent on the spot (by the way, that agent is David Canter, who loves to make headlines with his deals).  Sherman’s deal averages out to around $14 million per year.

if you’re talking about who will be replacing Sean Smith, the answer is actually Marcus Peters.

That $14 million brings us to the other option, the Franchise Tag, as that is roughly the amount of the Tag for cornerbacks in 2016.  However, tagging Sean Smith is essentially guaranteeing that he will leave the team in 2017.  Smith has made it clear he wants to try his hand in Free Agency.  Preventing him from doing that will go a long way in pissing him off, and likely result in a lengthy hold out until the Chiefs give into paying Smith what he wants.  Not to mention, that is a huge hit on the salary cap and will hurt KC’s ability to address other areas.  Doubly bad if the Chiefs lock up that much of the cap on the Franchise Tag and Smith holds out.

When you put all of that together, the financials of the situation just don’t work out for retaining Smith.  Of course, John Dorsey could say “the hell with all that” and focus on re-signing Smith anyways, but I really don’t see that happening.  With a big contract for Eric Berry already on the docket, and a decision whether to pay Jaye Howard or Dontari Poe another big deal also in the mix, Sean Smith getting a big pay day simply isn’t that practical.

Next: What are we working with?