Silence surrounding Orlando Brown Jr. is likely good news

The silence between Orlando Brown Jr. and the Kansas City Chiefs is likely a good thing when it comes to progress on a new contract.

These days, there is very little in the way of news coming out of Arrowhead Stadium, but when it comes to the primary order of business ahead of the Kansas City Chiefs—namely the negotiations on a long-term deal with starting left tackle Orlando Brown Jr.—it’s likely a good sign of progress.

The Chiefs have wrapped up most of the roster construction for the coming season by this point after OTAs and mandatory minicamp put a cap on the work of free agency and the draft. At this point, the Chiefs front office largely deserves a vacation after a long offseason of work with one primary job of signing Brown to an extension in front of them.

The Chiefs have stated all along that this was the work before them—at this very time—up until the NFL’s deadline of July 15. At that point, Brown would have to sign his franchise tag and just play on that for the rest of the season at $16.6 million cap hit. Neither side wants that to be the case. The Chiefs need the cap space going forward for flexibility while Brown wants the security.

The truth is that things were slow before now because Brown had yet to sign an agent, but now that he’s in place, both sides are clearly working behind the scenes to make something happen. If there were no progress, we’d be hearing lots of chatter from “sources” about how things are going (or not going), muddying the waters and generating drama in order to gain some kind of leverage at the negotiating table. Given the lack of any noise or chatter, it’s a sign that both sides are feeling good about the progress being made on such a major decision.

There’s still plenty of time left before the deadline—just over two weeks as of press time—so there should be an announcement soon. The only hope is that things stay silent until that moment.