Did the Kansas City Chiefs mishandle the Eric Berry situation?

The Kansas City Chiefs moved on from another franchise favorite in safety Eric Berry on Wednesday. Could they have done something different?

It’s never easy to move on from players that have made such an impact on the field and in the community. The Kansas City Chiefs have made a couple of those moves this off-season, the most recent being the release of former All-Pro safety Eric Berry.

During his nine years in Kansas City, Berry has made an enormous impact on the team and its fan base. There’s no doubt that the release of the star safety will feel like a major loss in many fans’ eyes. The truth of the matter is, the Chiefs are moving in a different direction, and it was time to move on in order to start over fresh on the defensive side of the ball.

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General manager Brett Veach is doing everything possible to help get this team to the Super Bowl in 2019. Veach and head coach Andy Reid, along with new defensive coordinator Steve Spagnuolo, are also trying to build a dynasty much like the New England Patriots have done over the past couple of decades. Unfortunately, that meant moving on from star players like Justin Houston, Dee Ford, and Eric Berry.

While Ford and Houston were hard to let go, they were no comparison for many fans when it came to Eric Berry. Through his tremendous overcoming of cancer and numerous injuries, Berry continued to come back better every season. He stole the hearts of so many fans in Kansas City and will remain in our hearts for a lifetime.

At the end of the day, Veach had to make a decision that impacts the entire franchise. He felt that moving on from Berry this offseason was the best move for the team going forward. There are some fans calling this a mistake, and there are other fans saying that Veach mishandled the situation by not getting anything in return for the star safety. Before you lash out at Veach, let’s take a look at everything that has happened to lead up to this decision.

A lot of fans have been insisting that the Chiefs made a mistake letting go of former general manager John Dorsey. While that is an argument that can be made in some aspects, Dorsey is a major reason that the Chiefs are in this situation in the first place. Forcing both Berry and Houston into prove it years in which both players had career seasons, pushed the team to massively overpay for both players.

There were rumors floating around during the negotiations with Berry that Dorsey wanted him to pay for a disability insurance policy that would name the team the beneficiary. Obviously, that didn’t sit well with Berry and his agent as he would then move on to play the 2016 season without a new deal. Many sources said that the two sides were never really close on coming to a deal.

Following the stunning 2016 season, Berry was once again in another negotiation with Dorsey over an extended deal. Before his deal was made, Dorsey had signed other players to early first deals like left tackle Eric Fisher and right guard Laurent Duvernay-Tardif, both drafted by Dorsey himself. There were also rumors that Chiefs owner Clark Hunt had to step in to get the deal done in 2017.

Given all of this, there’s a reason to believe that there might have been some love lost between Berry and the Chiefs, or at least John Dorsey. Regardless, by the time the deal got done in 2017, the cost was, no doubt, much higher than it would have been if Berry had gotten his deal a season before.

The 2017 season was the first season under his new contract, but the elite money didn’t set in until the 2018 season when Berry was a cap hit of $16.5 million. Berry tore his Achilles tendon in the Week 1 game of the 2017 season against the Patriots and would spend the rest of the year on Injured Reserve. The consensus coming into 2018 was that he would be healthy and ready to go until he suffered pain in his heel during team practices early in August.

The team was under the impression that Berry would be able to go earlier than later as they kept him on the roster and explained the situation as “day to day“. Kansas City would later find out that Berry was suffering from a Haglund’s deformity in that Achilles which was understood to be extremely painful. The Chiefs gave Berry the benefit of the doubt and let him decide when he would be comfortable to rejoin his teammates on the field in 2018.

It wasn’t until Week 15 that Berry decided to give it a go when the Chiefs were hosting the Los Angeles Chargers in an attempt to put the division away for good. He would go on to play another game the following week against the Seattle Seahawks, but that was the last we saw of Berry until the AFC Championship against the Patriots.

At the end of the season, Berry went to get a second opinion regarding his heel only to find out that the injury was not significant enough to need surgery. The Chiefs then released a statement that Berry would not need surgery and would be healthy for the 2019 season. Unfortunately, the team decided that it would not be in a Kansas City uniform.

In my opinion, finding out that the injury was not severe enough to require surgery was the tipping point for the team. The Chiefs most likely felt that there was some trust lost with Berry as he decided to sit out almost the entire season while under the contract that was given to him by the former GM. They also made the decision that they could not go into 2019 with the decision being left up to Berry on whether he would play each week.

Despite reports that Berry was healthy and would be ready to go in 2019, it seems that this was a smokescreen to try and find a suitor via trade before his bonus hit on March 15. Following the signing of former Houston Texans and Arizona Cardinals safety, Tyrann Mathieu, there were rumors that John Dorsey and the Cleveland Browns were interested in acquiring Berry.

I don’t personally believe these rumors to be true—not via trade anyway. Given the issues between Berry and Dorsey the last time they were in negotiations, it seems highly unlikely that Dorsey would all of a sudden be willing to pay for Berry’s current contract with his new team, especially after some of the contracts he has already taken on this off-season including wide receiver Odell Beckham Jr.

There were no other reports of teams being interested in a trade for Berry which led to the Chiefs cutting him on Wednesday. Labeling Berry as a post-June 1 cut allows the Chiefs to save $9.5 million on the salary cap in 2019 and $5.5 million in 2020 according to Terez Paylor of Yahoo Sports. It was the best move that the team had given there were no other suitors for Berry via trade with a bonus deadline just around the corner.

If Berry had played even just the second half of the 2018 season, we likely would be watching him in a Chiefs uniform in 2019. His absence for almost the entire season likely is the result of his release. Given that Berry has played in only four games over the past two seasons, including the playoffs, there’s no reason any team would be willing to take on his contract and at the same time send something to Kansas City to acquire him. Teams that would be interested can sign Berry to a new deal that would not break the bank most likely in 2019.

Next. Chiefs fans got the defensive upheaval they wanted. dark

I don’t believe that Veach could have gotten anything in return for Berry this offseason, and going into the 2019 season with the same uncertainty with a season that the Chiefs are planning for Super Bowl or bust, it didn’t make sense to keep Berry around on that massive deal. Understanding that it’s unfortunate that Berry is gone, it was the right move by Veach and the Chiefs to move on the way that they did.

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