Why the Kansas City Chiefs fired the wrong man
By Britt Zank
Now that I’ve shown you why I’m not the biggest Reid fan in Chiefs Kingdom, let’s talk about Dorsey. He has not been a perfect general manager. He’s had some contracts blow up in his face; see Dwayne Bowe and Ben Grubbs. He’s had some draft picks that didn’t look good. The 2013 draft was pretty bad besides Travis Kelce and Eric Fisher. He made the mistake of signing Alex Smith before Justin Houston, which I wrote an entire article this week about how bad of a decision that was.
However, the positives of Dorsey have far outweighed his negatives. I keep hearing people talking about his handling of the cap. Can anyone name one player the Chiefs didn’t get solely because of a lack of cap space? Even as we sit right now, the Chiefs have over $5 million in cap space to use if they needed an emergency pick up. So the cap idea has no legs. People are mad he cut Jeremy Maclin, supposedly the team’s best receiver, just to get cap space. As a Mizzou alum, nobody reading this is a bigger fan of Maclin than I am, but maybe Dorsey thinks he’s done. Now this season will prove it and show if he would have been worth $10 million or not. If he has a horrible year, that was a genius move by Dorsey. If he goes out and has a great year, than it was a bad move. I could care less about the voicemail; all these guys are grown men making millions of dollars. He cut him when he could sign with a new team and didn’t screw him over. There is no good way to fire someone.
How exactly is the cap situation so poor if the Chiefs have an arguably league’s-best roster, with plenty of developmental talent waiting in the wings?
The only player the Chiefs have released since Dorsey who has been very successful with their new team is Rodney Hudson. He’s been great for the Raiders, but the Chiefs replaced him with Mitch Morse, who has also been very good at a fraction of the cost. Every other player the Chiefs have cut to save cap space has proven to be a good move. We will see about Poe, Charles, Maclin, and Howard this year, but I think those will all be shown as smart moves. Yes, Dorsey spends up to the cap every year and we don’t have $20 million sitting around to sign a dream team. However, many experts have reported multiple general managers describe the Chiefs as having the best 53-man roster in the league. How exactly is the cap situation so poor if the Chiefs have an arguably league’s-best roster, with plenty of developmental talent waiting in the wings?
Yes, he waited a year too long to sign both Justin Houston and Eric Berry. But after this move I look back on those and I believe Dorsey didn’t want to sign either guy long term. He drafted Ford to replace Houston, but the team squashed that. There are multiple reports out there that Clark personally got involved in the Berry talks because he wanted to get it done. To this point, the Chiefs would have been better off without the Houston deal. However, that contract is still young and if he’s healthy it could turn around. The Berry deal hasn’t even started yet, so time will tell there as well. But before we squash these moves as knocks on Dorsey, I think you at least have to entertain the idea that they weren’t deals he chose to make.
Where Dorsey really shines is in the draft. If you look at the Chiefs starting roster, they are almost all of Dorsey’s guys. How good would the Chiefs be without Tyreek Hill, Travis Kelce, Marcus Peters, Chris Jones, and four of the five starting offensive lineman? Let’s not forget he drafted a quarterback in the first round for the first time in many Chiefs’ fans lifetime setting the team up for the future. Was he perfect in the draft? No, of course he wasn’t. Dee Ford was a reach and has played like one for the most part, but showed promise last year. They had to cut their second overall pick last year before he even made one practice and the 2013 draft was awful besides the Kelce and Fisher picks. But in terms of his batting average in the draft, he has to be close to leading the league.