Jeremy Maclin’s release will hurt the Chiefs in myriad ways

Dead cap space

The Chiefs needed money. That much was clear. You have to sign your rookies and you can’t go into a season on a razor thin margin. The Chiefs were at $2.1 million of cap space, per Jason Fitzgerald at Over the Cap, before releasing Maclin. They needed another couple million, then, to at least sign the rookies, who will cost an estimated $4.3 to $4.5 million of cap room in 2017.

Instead of creating the necessary $2.5 million or even an extra million or two to gain a bit more margin heading into the season, the Chiefs cut loose one of their biggest investments yet and gain $10 million. That amount of free space and breathing room is the best part of this whole deal, but it comes at a cost.

This year, the Chiefs will carry $2.4 million in dead cap space. Because of the timing of the release of Maclin, as a post-June 1 cut, the team can then push off the remaining $4.8 million in dead cap space to 2018, meaning the team will continue to pay for the release of Maclin without having the benefit of Maclin for the next two years, in 2017 and 2018. While Maclin is playing for another team, the Chiefs earned a reprieve of $10 million this season (and the rest of the deal) only to still lose nearly $7 million in dead cap space. In other words, that’s $7 million that brings back exactly zero in assets, or almost the price of Bennie Logan in 2017.