The Kansas City Chiefs shocked the NFL world on Friday when they cut star wide receiver Jeremy Maclin. The Chiefs Kingdom was caught completely off guard by the move and many were left shaking their heads in disbelief when they heard the news. I don’t know of any Chiefs fans that are happy about the move. How could you be?
On a team that has struggled on offense at times, Jeremy Maclin was far and away Kansas City’s most accomplished wide receiver. There simply is no argument to be made that the Chiefs are a better team today than they were a week ago when Maclin was on the roster. So does that mean that Chiefs fans should panic? Is the team giving up on the 2017 season before training camp even starts? Should we lose our collective faith in Andy Reid and John Dorsey? I know many are upset and reeling from this move, so let’s take some time today and talk through this.
First of all, why did they make this move?
I heard several Chiefs fans say something to the effect of “there has to be more to this” after the news of Maclin’s release broke. The thinking being that in order for K.C. to release Maclin he either need to have some injury we didn’t know about, got arrested, punched out Patrick Mahomes, or stole Andy Reid’s cheeseburger.
I don’t think any of those things are true.
Maclin’s release is due to two facts that I believe are indisputable.
#1. Jeremy Maclin had become the Chiefs number three option in the passing game.
#2. Jeremy Maclin was due to make 12.4 million dollars this season.
The Kansas City Chiefs made a business decision not to pay their number three option in the passing game 12.4 million dollars this season. That’s it. There is no secret motivation that Adam Schefter is going to tweet out next week. The Chiefs had almost no cap space (I could be wrong, but I don’t believe they even had enough space to sign all their draft picks) and they decided to cut Maclin because his price tag no longer matched his role on this team. Period.
Now, if you want to argue that the offense needs Maclin as the third option and it was worth paying him that much anyway, fine, I have no problem with that. The Chiefs could have cut or restructured someone else and you have every right to argue they would have been better off finding that cap space elsewhere.
So now we’re back to the question of if Chiefs fans should panic that Maclin is gone?
Let’s start with the case for panicking.