The Kansas City Chiefs have to prepare now for an expensive future

The Kansas City Chiefs must be smart this offseason to help prepare for some expensive offseasons to come.

While the Kansas City Chiefs have created enough salary cap room to start the league year and appear likely to create even more as the offseason unfolds, they must be smart about the manner in which they sign new players. While the cap situation looks positive and in a good place currently, the future could be expensive. The two things to look for.

First off, a multitude of Chiefs are closing in on free agency—three main components and one newly acquired one. Marcus Peters, Chris Jones, Tyreek Hill and the newly acquired Kendall Fuller are all free agents after the 2019 season. Simply to keep those players alone will be expensive.

I’m not going to guess on salaries, but know this. Marcus Peters, when the time comes, will be the highest paid defensive back in football.

The issue that compounds the contracts for the aforementioned free agents is that Patrick Mahomes’s rookie contract expires in 2020, and his fifth year option in 2021 likely will be expensive. Because Mahomes was drafted in the top 10 of the 2017 draft, his option is the value of the transition tag at his position.  For reference, the transition tag last year was $19 million. Early estimates have the 2021 price tag for Mahomes at or exceeding $25 million. Again, for one year, regardless, that’s a lot of coin.

As is often the case, players will sign contracts that increase in value as the years go by. However, the issue is that with Mahomes’s option sitting directly behind the four free agents, it becomes very problamatic to take that approach. Sure you can avoid a mess in 2021 perhaps, but what in the world do you do in 2022 when all four players plus Mahomes have growing contracts? Recently, San Francisco gave a monster contract to Jimmy Garaopplo, with a career total of seven starts. The numbers are for quarterbacks are growing, and they grow exponentially.

Why does this matter and why in the world do Chiefs fans care about this? Simple. If and when you see the Chiefs go quietly into free agency and avoid handing out long term deals to free agents with long guaranteed dollars, the team knows they have to maintain a certain level of cap room to simply afford their own free agents.

Veach and the rest of the current group are in their positions in no small part because of the cap issues Dorsey left behind when he was let go. This organization has not made it ca secret that cleaning up and maintaining a solid cap situation for years to come is a priority.

If the free agency starts and the Chiefs are quiet, understand it’s not an accident. Maintaining and keeping their best players around is a priority, and when it comes to affording your quarterback and defensive stars, it pays to plan ahead.