Patrick Peterson reportedly asks Arizona Cardinals for trade (and the Chiefs make sense)

The Arizona Cardinals came out recently and said trading Patrick Peterson wasn’t going to happen, but the player himself reportedly wants out.

The Kansas City Chiefs are in an interesting position.

As the top seed after seven weeks in the AFC, they are not wrong to have Super Bowl aspirations in Patrick Mahomes’ first year as quarterback. At the same time, they know that they are still young with several roster holes and that the future is likely brighter than the present. They have three picks among the top 64 in next year’s draft. Should they keep them and maintain that bright future or go all-in on a Super Bowl window?

The answer is, of course, to go all-in, but only if it makes sense to mortgage that future. The Chiefs already showed they believe in this course of action, if rumors are true at least, that they were in on Earl Thomas before the Seattle safety broke his leg which ruined any chance of a deal. In Thomas, the Chiefs were reportedly willing to trade a second round pick in exchange for the veteran safety.

Dealing for an All-Pro performer like Thomas shows that the Chiefs are willing to deal a valuable draft asset if the player will provide an immediate impact in the secondary. Those players are hard to find in today’s pass-happy NFL, but another such asset might be available after all in Arizona Cardinals cornerback Patrick Peterson.

Just last week, Cardinals president Michael Bidwill came out and quelled any rumors that Peterson was available via trade. Despite the Cardinals current losing record, Bidwill stated clearly that trading Peterson was not something of interest to the team. However, what if that player was frustrated and willing to vent those feelings publicly?

The Cardinals have a bright young quarterback in Josh Rosen with a number of serious issues on both sides of the football. It makes a lot of sense for the Cards to start over, build around Rosen and move forward with a fresh roster. The question is whether or not they want to part with Peterson.

The reason they might want to keep Peterson around is that he’s arguably the single best cornerback in football. He’s under a reasonable long-term contract that runs through 2020, which means any team that gets him will employ an All-Pro at corner for the next three seasons (including this one). For a team like the Chiefs, that’s very, very valuable.

We’ve argued the merits of this trade in detail before, so we don’t need to rehash everything here. Suffice it to say, Peterson would truly alter the Chiefs defense in very desirable ways, making an already dangerous team into a real threat defensively. The Chiefs would also have Peterson in place when others, like Steven Nelson and Orlando Scandrick, hit free agency next spring.

If Bidwill changes his mind, it will be interesting to see if the Chiefs are among those teams lining up in hopes the Cardinals will listen. They have the assets to make it work and the need in the secondary to plug him in.