Kansas City Chiefs salary cap situation gives them lots of options
If the Chiefs really wanted to focus more on the future than on trying to put everything into winning a Super Bowl in 2019 they could opt to use a big chunk of their current cap space on contract extensions for players currently on the roster. If the Chiefs front-loaded these deals so that they had a bigger cap hit this season, it would then free up money down the road. Teams typically do the opposite and have small cap hits in the first year and then they progressively get bigger. That is how the Chiefs got in the situation they were in with someone like Justin Houston.
The most obvious candidate for this offseason for a deal like this would be Chris Jones. The defensive lineman has seen his play improve in each of his first three seasons. Last season he really broke through with a 15.5 sack season where he was considered one of the top interior pass rushers in all the NFL. Jones will be just 25 when next season starts and there are already reports that he and the Chiefs are working on a new deal.
While Jones won’t likely be able to demand a deal quite as high as Aaron Donald’s six-year, $135 million deal that he signed last summer that averages $22.5 million per season, it’s not impossible to think that Jones could be asking for close to $20 million per year. Regardless of what the final numbers end up being, if the Chiefs feel they are done making big moves this offseason they could structure the deal so that they eat up a lot of their open cap space this year as part of the deal in order to keep his numbers lower in the seasons to come.
Should the Chiefs want to make a splash addition and extend Jones they can always keep his first year cap hit low to make it work under the cap. The downside to that is that it just means that much more money has to go into his cap hits down the road.
The other player that was originally thought to be a candidate for an extension this offseason was wide receiver Tyreek Hill. We don’t need to rehash the drama surrounding him this offseason, but even if it’s a best case scenario with Hill (as some are expecting), and he is not charged with anything, the negative press around the situation may be enough to keep the Chiefs from wanting to sign him to a massive deal. If they were, you can simply apply everything I just said about an extension for Jones to Hill as well. If the Chiefs extended both Jones and Hill, they could still easily give them each about a $10 million cap hit for the first year of the deal if they aren’t making any other big additions.
As far as an extension for quarterback Patrick Mahomes goes, it won’t happen this offseason but the Chiefs definitely have to be planning for it down the road as it is expected to be one of the biggest deals in NFL history. So whatever moves they make, you can bet they will be making sure it leaves enough space down the road for the Mahomes deal. However, that shouldn’t be a huge problem since as I stated earlier, they only currently have 13 players under contract past 2020. That leaves them the freedom to structure deals going forward around whatever they plan on paying him.
Finally, there is one more option for the Chiefs to consider this offseason.