Kansas City Chiefs tender offer to Rakeem Nunez-Roches
By Matt Conner
The Kansas City Chiefs have tendered a qualifying offer to defensive tackle Rakeem Nunez-Roches in an effort to retain another rotational player in 2018.
As a restricted free agent, Rakeem Nunez-Roches is beholden to the whims of the team that drafted him, the Kansas City Chiefs. Given his development and performance, it’s not surprising that the Chiefs want to bring him back for another season in 2018.
Restricted free agents (RFAs) are players who have accrued enough seasons to hit the open market in a very limited way. While those players are allowed to negotiate with any team in the National Football League and even agree to terms on a new deal, the RFA must also then submit that offer to his current team and allow them to match the deal and retain the player or let him go free.
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What complicates the matter even further for the RFA is that there is often compensation attached if another team signs a player away. In the case of Nunez-Roches, the Chiefs attached a sixth round compensation level to his qualifying offer. This means that if another team wants to put together a contract for Nunez-Roches that the Chiefs would not want to match, that team would owe the Chiefs a sixth round draft pick in the NFL Draft.
Given the ascending level of performance by Nunez-Roches, a sixth round choice is actually well worth the effort to sign him away. As a former sixth round choice himself, Nunez-Roches has developed exactly as a team would love to see from such a developmental pick. The big-bodied defensive lineman played sparingly in seven games during his rookie year in 2015. In 2016 that total increased to 11 games and included his first ever starts. Last year, Nunez Roches started 11 games for the Chiefs next to Chris Jones and played in all 16 games.
Given how thin the Chiefs line has become, it would be a major disappointment for another team to enjoy Nunez-Roches’s prime after the Chiefs did the hard work to develop his pro talents. A mere sixth round pick in return is hardly enough of a return for a dependable starter along the defensive line, but here’s hoping the market actually leaves the Chiefs with a favorable enough deal to match.