Kansas City Chiefs: How defensive contracts will affect roster battles

As fans of the Kansas City Chiefs anxiously await training camp, let’s take a look at how defensive contracts could ultimately affect some roster battles.

Fans of the Kansas City Chiefs (as well as those of all other NFL teams) now find themselves in the NFL dead zone. Free agency and the draft have come and gone, and the long wait until training camp has begun. It can be a tedious season to be a fan looking for something new to read about your favorite team. It can also be a challenging time for bloggers like yours truly to try and come up with something relevant to write about.

Last week I tried to meet those challenges with an in depth look at the Chiefs offensive roster and how different players’ contracts could affect possible roster battles when training camp rolls around. If you didn’t get a chance to read it I encourage you to click on the link and check it out either before or after you read this week’s post.

If you read last week’s post and remember my approach you can probably skip ahead to the next page and the first position group, but if not I’ll start by explaining my approach to these pieces again.

Let me start by saying that there is no need to jump into the comments and tell me that how they play on the field will ultimately determine things. I know that. I know that if an undrafted free agent plays amazing all camp and into the season, it is his play, not his small contract, that earned him that spot.

However, let’s say that two undrafted free agents at different positions both play great, one is competing with a veteran to whom the Chiefs are tied for the next several years, the other is competing with a veteran who is in the last year of his deal and the Chiefs can save a couple of million in cap space if they cut him.

That puts those UDFAs in very different positions when it comes to making the team. While we’d like to think it always comes down to play on the field the NFL is a business and money matters.

I also think how long a team has control of a player makes a difference. Let’s say two young players are battling for the last roster spot at their position and one is on the last year of his deal and the other is under contract through 2020. If the play on the field is similar it makes more sense to keep the guy under contract longer so if he continues to improve the team can keep him around longer on a cheap deal.

So this week I will break down the defensive position groups and look at how their contract situations could influence cap battles at that position. Again, ultimately the players must deliver on the field but here’s a look at what some players have working for or against them going into camp.

For each player I will give their current age, the last season they are currently under contract, and the cap savings if cut after June 1st. Also, without boring you with how the salary cap works, you will see some players listed as “contract not currently factoring into salary cap”. That just means that their salary is low enough that it doesn’t count into the top 51 players that count against the cap, meaning that if they are cut it would NOT save the team any money.

Let’s start with the defensive line.