Kansas City Chiefs should look offensive tackle in 2019 NFL Draft

Mitchell Schwartz’s future

Over at right tackle, the money invested is a bit lower but so is the acceleration year over year in terms of positional spending.

Mitchell Schwartz is the third highest-paid right tackle in the NFL right now per Over the Cap with a $7.7 million cap hit, and the Chiefs drew up his deal to basically remain static annually, as he counts exactly $8 million against the cap both in 2019 and 2020. Even as the cap rises, then, the Chiefs’ spending at the position remains the same (and together Fisher, it actually drops year over year).

Schwartz is only one year older than Fisher and comes with the NFL’s top ironman streak in terms of consecutive snaps played, so there’s very little reason to doubt that he can remain a great performer (and seriously underrated) at the position for years to come. It’s also true, however, that the Chiefs are paying for such a performance. The pay matches the productivity.

If the Chiefs were to need to find a way out of the contract for some reason, it makes zero sense, as we said, to make a move this year given the amount of dead space incurred for so little savings (the Chiefs would come out with just over $1 million in net gain. In 2019, it’s a completely different story. Just like Fisher, if designated as a cut after June 1, Fisher’s dead cap hit drops to $1.4 million over the next two seasons (or about half of Fisher’s total).