Have the Kansas City Chiefs done enough to replace Tyreek Hill?

How should the Chiefs approach the wide receiver position going forward?

Out of nowhere, the wide receiver position has risen to compete monetarily with the highest price positions in football. It’s now abundantly clear that every top-tier receiver, and arguably even second-tier receivers will be expecting north of $20 million a year.

For teams like the Chiefs, this is both a short and long-term issue to solve. There were various unconfirmed reports about the Chiefs’ final offer to Hill. The truth is if the Chiefs valued the wide receiver position even close to the cap hit Hill’s contract required the salary cap is flexible enough they’d presumably have made it work.

Given what’s happened this offseason, I’m skeptical the Chiefs would offer any of the top receivers what the market demands. That doesn’t mean they don’t need to inject the position with elite-level talent.

Before the bevy of wide receivers expecting major contracts, I scoffed at the notion the Chiefs should target a premier wide receiver in the draft. Positions like edge and cornerback have long been weaknesses of this team and signing even average talent in free agency costs a bundle.

This new market changes things. Unless the Chiefs think Andy Reid’s system and Patrick Mahomes’ quarterbacking render skill positions a dime a dozen, to solve their need for talent in the long term they’ll need to be aggressive in the draft.

The pipedream is a player like Jameson Williams, who just visited the Chiefs last week. To acquire a player like Williams, the Chiefs would need to expend significant draft capital and trade up to at least the teens in next week’s draft.

The Chiefs don’t have to go to that extent to solve their long-term challenge at the position. For several years in a row, the wide receiver class has been deep and this year is no different. Still, the transformation of the wide receiver market makes targeting wide receivers early in the draft a growing priority.

While the front office has mitigated the loss of Hill in the short term and set the offense up for success in 2022, building a pipeline of talent at the position will require a more aggressive draft strategy than in past years.