Chiefs: Is Trading Out of the First Round a Good Idea? – trading back and gaining picks is a popular thought for many fans. Especially when one’s favorite team is lacking draft selections for the upcoming draft, as is the Kansas City Chiefs, who at this time only hold 5 draft picks for the upcoming 2020 draft starting April 23rd: picks 32, 63, 96, 128, and 159.
So, is trading back a good decision? This is a question that has no immediate answer. So much depends on the player/players drafted. If the players are productive and kept on the team for the full four years of their respective contracts, and especially if the highest drafted player, the one that could have been drafted in the first round, is a player that you would want your team to keep for at least a fifth season.
A person could look at any number of trades of this nature and come to different conclusions for each, but the one I’m going to study, as I’m sure you’ve all guessed by now, is Chris Jones.
During the 2016 NFL draft, the Chiefs traded their 1st round selection, number 28 overall, and their 7th rounder, number 249, to the San Francisco 49ers for San Francisco’s 2nd, 4th and 6th round picks, numbers 37, 105 and 178.
According to the Jimmy Johnson trade value chart, San Francisco’s 2 picks have a value of 661 points, while the 3 selections for the Chiefs total 634.2.
Using the Rich Hill chart, the values are 210.42 for the 49ers and 200.28 for KC. Either metric shows it to be a reasonable trade for both teams, but trade values aren’t what we want to use to determine the profitabilities of the trades.
With picks 28 and 249, the 49ers selected OG Josh Garnett and DB Prince Charles Iworah, respectively.
The three selections acquired by the Chiefs allowed them to draft:
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- Pick 37, Chris Jones: who has played all four years of his career for Kansas City and has become one of the best defensive linemen in the NFL.
- Pick 105, OL Parker Ehinger: who played a total of 252 snaps for the Chiefs in 2016 before blowing out his right knee. Ehinger played 72 snaps in 2017 in the Chiefs first game but was inactive the rest of the season. In 2018 Ehinger was traded to the Dallas Cowboys for CB Charvarius Ward.
- Pick 178, DB D. J. White: who played a total of 262 snaps for the Chiefs, about half on special teams, all in 2016. White was waived by the Chiefs about half way through the 2017 season.
For San Francisco, Garnett turned out to be a bust, although he played in 15 games as a rookie, he spent all of 2017 on IR and played in only 1 game in 2018 before suffering multiple injuries. Garnett was out of football in 2019. Iworah spent 2016 on the 49ers practice squad, was on IR in 2017 before being waived. Iworah bounced around several off-season camps in 2018 and never played a down in a regular season game.
These decisions might have played a role in Trent Baalke being fired as the 49ers GM.
Now, since Chris Jones was the only one of these five draft selections to play out his rookie contract, this raises a question on how to value the selections. There are many ways this could be looked at. Should they be valued as to their contribution to their team, or possibly have their value assessed by how much their original team actually paid them.
I don’t believe any team, be it the owner, general manager, head coach or even fan base, goes into a draft thinking, “We should draft this guy, even though we think he’ll be a bust and never play a down for us.” Every draft pick, on the day he is drafted, is expected to fulfill the entire rookie contract.
Since the advent of the “Rookie Pay Scale,” starting with the 2011 draft, each drafted player has a dollar amount assigned to their respective draft position that is, for the most part, set. Every drafted rookie contract is for a term of four years, and I believe the total of the 4 year rookie deal is the best way to compare trade value. The values on the trade charts don’t matter, but the dollar values to the salary cap do:
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- For the San Francisco 49ers 2016 draft, selections 28 and 249 had 4 year rookie contracts that totaled $11,621,730.
- For the Kansas City Chiefs, draft picks 37, 105 and 178 in the 2016 draft had 4 year rookie contracts that totaled $11,650,693.
Although the difference is negligible, trading back and adding a draft pick, was indeed more expensive in this example.
The Fifth Year Option: An Elephant in the Room
The 5th year option is a tool that can be exercised by teams for their first round draft selections. This allows teams to lock up their first round picks for a fifth season at a known salary. The salary varies by position played and by draft position. The 5th year option salary for players drafted 1 through 10 are calculated with one formula, while players drafted 11 through 32 have their salaries calculated by a different formula.
Teams that don’t have a 1st round draft selection, or trade out of the 1st round, lose the ability to hold onto their highest draft pick for a 5th season, without either a new contract extension, or by using the franchise tag.
Fifth Year Option vs the Franchise Tag
This is a no brainer, especially for players drafted in the 11-to-32 range of the draft. The 5th year option will save cap dollars versus the franchise tag. Looking strictly at Chris Jones, by trading back, the Chiefs did save a little money over the four years of Jones rookie contract. Jones was paid, at pick 37, $6,231,240. If the Chiefs would have stayed at pick 28 in round 1, Jones rookie contract would have had a value of $9,304,310. A difference of just over $3M for the full 4 years of the contract.
The difference really arises for year five. Had the Chiefs selected Jones with pick 28 in the 2016 draft, the fifth year option for defensive tackles would have given Jones a cap hit of $7,690,000 for the 2020 season, and there wouldn’t have been any questions to whether or not he would be a Kansas City Chief next season.
The franchise tag for a defensive tackle is projected to be a minimum of $15,500,000. If we add Jones rookie contract to the franchise tag number, we have a total of $21,731,240 to keep Jones a Chiefs for 5 seasons.
If Jones had been drafted in round 1, his rookie contract for the 28th pick, plus the 5th year option, would have been a total of $16,994,310, a considerable savings.
Some of you might be thinking that if we didn’t trade back for Jones, we wouldn’t have had the 105 pick to select Parker Ehinger, and without Ehinger, we wouldn’t have been able to trade for Charvarius Ward. In the 2016 draft, we had both 105 and 106 draft picks. So who knows, we might have selected Ehinger at 106 instead of Eric Murray. At any rate, I’m not willing to bark up this tree.
A Future Look: To Trade or Not to Trade
I’ll be the first to admit, Chris Jones is a sample size of one and any conclusion would be premature. However, I have looked over a lot of numbers, not only for the 5th year option salaries, but also franchise tag values. I believe that the position of the player that would be selected with pick 32, should play a role in whether to try to trade or to use the pick.
With the Chiefs being the caboose for selecting prospects, and should be for at least the next three drafts, GM Brett Veach should take into consideration, the prospects playing position, when using pick 32.
When the clock starts ticking for pick 32, and the best players still on the board are interior offensive linemen, running backs and linebackers, I would be looking to trade back. If, however, the best players available are wide receivers, cornerbacks, offensive tackles or defensive linemen, I would be giving serious consideration to using pick number 32 and having the 5th year option available for future use.
Paul Pulley — ArrowheadOne
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