Given the Kansas City Chiefs' somewhat dire salary-cap situation coming into this 2026 offseason, moves obviously had to be made to get on the right side of the number before the new League Year begins on March 11.
The simplest and most cost-effective way to create cap space is to restructure contracts, which every single one of the 32 teams does each and every year. But the other way, of course, is to cut players. And in that regard, the Chiefs certainly had (and still have) plenty of options to consider.
In the nearly two months since Kansas City last took the field, a couple of names thrown around as possible cap casualties have been right tackle Jawaan Taylor and linebacker Drue Tranquill. Asked about both last week, however, general manager Brett Veach actually sounded optimistic about keeping both, noting (just like we did above) that the organization had several contracts that could be reworked.
"With guys like Jawaan (Taylor) and Drue Tranquil, someone asked me about earlier, you know, these guys started for us, and they play a lot of football for us,” Veach said. “And again, our cap situation, I don’t know if we’re six or seven over, but I think we have $60 million in convertible contracts, too. So, I mean, we have many different ways to attack this, and I think that’s the one thing that we’ve been good at. And we don’t do a lot of money pushed down in the future years, and I think we run a pretty tight ship there, so this gives us flexibility to do different things."
So, Taylor and Tranquill seemed safe, right? Well, not so much. On Monday, it was reported that the Chiefs will indeed move on from Taylor, thus creating $20 million in cap space while only taking on about $7.391 million in dead money, according to Over The Cap.
Naturally, that makes it much more difficult to figure out what their plans are for Tranquill.
Cutting Drue Tranquill would save the Chiefs another $6 million against the 2026 salary cap
If the Chiefs were to also part ways with Tranquill, who's set to play the 2026 campaign on the final season of the three-year, $19 million extension he signed in March 2024, they'd save another $6 million against the cap while taking on just $1.5 million in dead money.
That's a decent amount of cash, but with the $20 million in space created by Taylor's departure, not to mention the more than $8 million created by cutting Mike Danna, Kansas City would be best served to keep Tranquill around for another year, especially given the way he performed this past season.
Among every Chiefs player who took at least 200 defensive snaps in 2025, the 30-year-old's 76.2 overall PFF grade ranked third, trailing only safety Bryan Cook (83.5) and fellow linebacker Nick Bolton (78.9).
And among 88 qualifying linebackers, Tranquill's overall mark ranked 13th, with his 89.4 run-defense grade ranking sixth. He also recorded the lowest missed tackle percentage (3.6%) among linebackers with at least 100 tackle attempts. Sure, he's not the best pass rusher, and he did struggle at times in coverage. But from an overall standpoint, it's going to be difficult for the Chiefs to find a player of his caliber for less than the $7.5 million he's set to count against the cap in 2026.
With Leo Chenal also set to hit free agency, the Chiefs could be too thin at linebacker to let Tranquill go as well. Jeffrey Bassa is waiting in the wings as last season's fifth-round choice. Cooper McDonald is also around as a rookie free agent the team seemed to really like. At this point, it would best serve the Chiefs to keep him. But at this point, you just never know, and we're simply going to have to wait and see how things play out over the next week.