The Kansas City Chiefs once gave a ridiculous contract to Rod Streater

Looking back at the ridiculous contract once handed by the Kansas City Chiefs to Rod Streater.

Back in the spring of 2016, the Kansas City Chiefs signed veteran free agent Rod Streater to a one-year contract. It’s the sort of low-level free agent signing that fills in roster holes or provides competition for the Chiefs every offseason, except this time around, the Chiefs happened to offer a tremendous amount of money to Streater for that single season: a total of $4.8 million.

Four years later, this deal is now inconsequential, of course. There are no lingering ramifications from the contract. Streater is a footnote in Chiefs history. It might seem silly to even drudge up the team’s financial history to even talk about it. Except, here we are in June without official dates for training camp to begin and the amount offered to Streater was so ridiculous that it’s worth bringing up again.

If this seems random, it is. When researching finances for another column weeks ago, Streater’s name popped up with this new link and the total of $4.8 million for a single year stood out to me. Why? Because that amount of money is ridiculous for such a low-level signing. It felt like a key piece of evidence in the “John Dorsey was horrible at finances” file that no one ever brought out.

Think of this: In today’s money, Streater would have been the 14th highest-paid player on the Chiefs roster at a cap hit of $4.8 million. Despite the fact that he’s not even a starting wideout, the Chiefs were ready to pony up as much cap space for a single year for Streater as three total players brought back this season on one-year deals: cornerback Bashaud Breeland ($3M), wideout Demarcus Robinson ($1M), and defensive lineman Mike Pennel ($800K). That’s bananas.

(In case you think Streater was coming off of an incredible season or something, you should know John Dorsey offered this contract knowing Streater only had 10 total receptions over the previous two years combined.)

What’s even more amazing about this whole story is that the Chiefs never had to pay it. Somehow in the spring, Streater’s representation was able to secure a one-year deal with such rich incentives that it was nearly $5 million for the 2016 season. By August, the Chiefs needed cap space and moved the goalposts on those incentives, making them unlikely to be reached. Therefore, those same incentives went from counting against the cap to not counting at all, freeing up $4 million in cap space.

Even then, none of this mattered. Before active rosters were due, Streater was flipped to the San Francisco 49ers along with a conditional 7th round pick in exchange for the Niners’ own seventh rounder. Streater played a single season in San Fran and caught 18 passes for 191 yards all on a contract that was once an incredible achievement for his agent before somehow losing stream before the season even began.