Chiefs: How the Draft

Affects the Salary Cap

by Paul Pulley | March 28, 2019

Therefore, with the numbers available for us to work with, to sign all their draft picks in 2019, we can now see that the Kansas City Chiefs will need just over…

Chiefs: How the Draft Affect the Salary Cap – There have been some comments lately about how much the drafted players will cost on the salary cap and whether or not trading draft selections will have very much effect on the cap. I have paid attention to the cap hits of various draft picks, but since drafted rookies are actually so much more affordable since the NFL adopted the rookie pay scale, and the percentage of cap space that a draft class commands is so small, that I really haven’t looked at it in depth.

As some of you may have noticed, I kinda like playing with numbers, so I thought, “what the heck”, let’s bounce some numbers around and see what happens. I thought about going back a couple of drafts, just to see how trades affected the outcome, but when dealing with future picks, the value of the future pick can be altered so drastically that it just becomes a guess as to the actual value when trying to look forward.

In 2017, as we all know, the Chiefs traded their 2018 1st round pick to the Buffalo Bills in order to move up for Patrick Mahomes II, a selection that netted the Bills the 22nd pick of the 2018 draft, a pick that was traded twice more before being used by the Tennessee Titans to select Rashaan Evans.
Two selections later, in 2017, the Houston Texans traded their 2018, 1st round pick, to the Cleveland Browns to select Deshaun Watson, which ended up as the 4th overall pick in 2018 for Cleveland.

These were two very similar moves that ended with extremely different results. There were several different reasons for the different outcomes, but my point here is that the final outcome of the future pick is impossible to predict.

Does Trading Up Cost More

In an admittedly minimal amount of research, (sorry everyone, I just don’t have the time), if any team is trading multiple draft selections to move up the draft board for a single pick, then as far as simply looking at cap dollars to sign the selections, it looks as if trading up, thereby signing fewer players is always going to cost less. Ultimately saving cap space. I looked at a few trades that took place during the 2017 draft that involved multiple picks and several teams and this is what I found.

Author’s note: I am using the phrases “rookie salary” or “rookie deal” to describe the player’s 1st year cap hit of their initial 4-year contract. I started to look at the total 4-year rookie contract value, but since so many of these players do not remain with the team that drafted them for that first 4-year duration, it quickly became an exercise in futility.

The Kansas City Chiefs traded overall draft picks 104, 132 and 245 to the Minnesota Vikings in order to trade up to pick 86 for Kareem Hunt. Kareem Hunt’s rookie salary was $658,988.

The Vikings traded pick 104 to the 49ers, who selected CJ Beathard, Beathard’s 1st year salary was $641,572. The Vikings traded pick 132 to the Eagles, who picked Donnel Pumphrey, who’s rookie deal was valued at $575,888. With pick 245, the Vikings selected Jack Tocho. Tocho had a rookie salary of $481,871.
The three selections traded away by the Chiefs had a total 1st year contract value of $1,699,331, considerably more than Hunt’s salary, thereby saving the Chiefs $1,040,343 against the cap. On the other hand, the Chiefs got one player versus three.
Also during the 2017 draft, the Cleveland Browns traded picks 33 and 108 to the Green Bay Packers to move back into the 1st round for pick number 29. With pick 29, the Browns selected David Njoku, who’s rookie deal was valued at $1,731,835.
The Packers selected Kevin King and Vince Biegel respectively with picks 33 and 108. Those two draft selections combined had a rookie salary of $1,925,868. One could say the the Packers getting two players for less than $200K difference was a better deal, and it looked that way initially, but considering Biegel was only with the Packers for one season and spent half of that on the PUP list, it didn’t end up that well.

The Seahawk Multiple

Also in the 2017 draft, the Seattle Seahawks initially had the 26th overall selection.

Seattle traded this pick to the Atlanta Falcons for picks 31, 95 and 249. Seattle then traded pick 31 to the San Francisco 49ers for picks 34 and 111. Finally, the Seahawks traded pick 34 to the Jacksonville Jaguars for picks 35 and 187.
Pick number 26, that went to the Falcons, had a rookie salary of $1,857,551.
Pick 31, for the 49ers, had a rookie salary of $1,642,830.
For the Jaguars, pick 34 had a rookie salary of $1,276,029.
The 5 selections that Seattle ended up with, picks 35, 95, 111, 187 and 249, had a combined total first year contract value of $3,572,836, almost double the cap hit of their original pick number 26.

Seattle did get five players for the original single selection, so did they come out ahead? Yeah, probably, even though pick 35 was Malik McDowell, who was injured in the off-season after the draft and never played for the Seahawks, but this exercise is to look exclusively at the salary cap consequences. Therefore, I would have to say that trading back for multiple draft picks is going to increase the cost to the salary cap without fail.

The Kansas City Chiefs 2018 Draft

The Chiefs went into the 2018 draft with 8 draft picks, 54, 78, 86, 122, 124, 196, 233 and 243.

These 8 selections had a total 1st year cap hit of $5,097,130.
Chiefs general manager Brett Veach made 3 trades during the 2018 draft. His final trade was trading picks 233 and 243 in order to move up for pick 198.
Selection 198 had a 1st year cap hit of $517,737, whereas picks 233 and 243 had combined rookie deals of $1,000,946, saving the Chiefs $483,209 on the cap.
Veach’s second trade was using picks 86 and 122 to trade up for selection 75.
Pick 75 had a 1st year cap hit of $719,850, while picks 86 and 122 combine for $1,329,140, saving the Chiefs $609,290 of cap space.

The Draft Cap Caveat

General Manager Brett Veach’s first trade during the 2018 draft, was a transaction trading 2 picks for 2 picks. Veach traded the Chiefs original selections of 54 and 78 to the Cincinnati Bengals for picks 46 and 100.

The combined 1st year cap hit of picks 46 and 100 were $1,779,564.
The combined rookie deals of picks 54 and 78 were $1,610,535. This trade actually increased the salary cap hit of the Chiefs, but by only $169,029.
The six 2018 drafts picks that the Chiefs ended up with, had a total 1st year cap hit of $4,173,660.
With GM Veach trading up three times, but selecting 2 fewer players, actually used $923,470 less cap space in 2018.
That $923,470 represented about ½ of 1% of the $177.2M 2018 salary cap.

My feelings after performing this small scale study, is the difference in the cap implications for trading up or down during the draft, is just simply inconsequential.

Cost of the 2019 Draft and Top 51 Rule

Now that I have completely and thoroughly bored you to death, let’s discuss the initial cost of the 2019 draft class as we currently know it to be. Before we get into the cost of the draft, let’s first discuss the “top 51 rule.” Under the current collective bargaining agreement, the NFL has what’s known as the “Top 51 Rule.” Since each team is permitted to carry up to 90 players on their roster during the off-season, through OTA’s, mini camps, training camp and the pre-season, only the 51 largest salary cap hits for each team, during the current year, count against that team’s salary cap. This rule is in effect from the beginning of the league year until just prior to the start of the regular season. The top 51 rule for 2019 ends at 12:00 am on September 5th.

The 51st valued salary can be different for each team, but we are, of course, here to discuss the Chiefs. In looking at OTC (overthecap), we can see that the players ranking 46 through 51 each have a 2019 cap hit of $570,000. Therefore, any player signed with a cap hit of less than that amount will not count as part of the top 51. This also has a role when signing players with a cap hit larger than $570,000.

Let’s use new signee, Damien Wilson, as an example. Wilson signed a 2-year contract with a first year cap hit of $1,875,000. So, did the cap go up by that amount? Well… yes and no. Yes, because Wilson’s $1.875M was added to the cap but no because… when that happened, player number 51, with a cap hit of $570,000 became player number 52, therefore his cap hit was subtracted. Under the top 51 rule, Wilson’s signing increased the salary cap by $1,305,000 instead of the full $1,875,000.

If you are wondering why this is important, it’s because this same process will happen with the signing of this years draft picks. Even if we are quite certain that trades will happen, we can still get an idea of what this years draft class will cost. If we look at the projected cost of signing each of the Chiefs current draft selections, they are;

As can be seen, the total salary cap hit for the 8 current draft picks in their first season will be approximately $6.5M. The question is, will it take that much cap space to get them signed? The answer is, no, of course not.

Since the top 51 rule is in effect until the beginning of the regular season, and we have established that the lowest of the Chiefs top 51 salaries is $570,000, and as we can see, the last four draft picks have a contract value less than that amount, those four can be signed with no change to the salary cap whatsoever.

Using the OTC numbers, when picks 29, 61, 63 and 92 are signed, players currently on the roster with salary rankings of 51, 50, 49 and 48, will drop out of the top 51 and their salaries will be subtracted from the cap. Since each of those have a cap number of $570,000, the salary cap space required will look like this.

Therefore, with the numbers available for us to work with, to sign all their draft picks in 2019, we can now see that the Kansas City Chiefs will need just over… 2 million dollars of cap space, while the Top 51 Rule is in effect and assuming no trades are made. Do you still want to trade up… or down… or what ever you were thinking previously?

Paul Pulley — ArrowheadOne

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