Chiefs: Who Will It Be? A Dee or a Justin

Any RFA or ERFA that is not tendered a contract by their current team, becomes a UFA at the beginning of the new League Year.

A player that is under contract can be resigned or extended at any time by their current team.

• A note: These definitions are all relatively basic and for more in-depth and detailed explanations, there are a number of places online that can be used.

The 4 ERFAs for the Chiefs are:

• PK Harrison Butker
• DL Justin Hamilton
• WR Marcus Kemp
• TE Alex Ellis

Since all of these guys got some playing time in 2018, and they can be kept for a league minimum, I would expect the Chiefs to bring all of them back.

The Chiefs have 2 RFAs:

• DB Jordan Lucas
• LB Terrance Smith

Both of these RFAs saw playing time throughout the season, Smith was placed on IR in late October, Lucas ended the season as a starter. Both played quite a bit on special teams, so I would expect the Chiefs to offer them a contract, but this is hard to predict with the upcoming changes to the defense. Smith was un-drafted but Lucas was a 6th round draft pick. If the Chiefs placed the lowest (Original Round) tenders on each, there would be no compensation if Smith were to sign with another team, but the Chiefs would get a 6th round pick if another team were to sign Lucas.

Unrestricted Free Agents

Of the 16 UFAs the Chiefs have, 6 of them were signed at various times to fill in spots vacated last season by injury. The six are:

• WR Kelvin Benjamin
• DB Orlando Scandrick
• RB Charcandrick West
• LB Frank Zombo
• OL Jeff Allen

I’m not expecting any of these players to be retained by the Chiefs. The exception might be Allen, if the team fills they need more depth on the OL during the off season.

7 of the remaining 10 are offensive players:

• TE Demetrius Harris
• FB Anthony Sherman
• RB Spencer Ware
• OL Mitch Morse
• OL Jordan Devey
• WR De’Anthony Thomas
• WR Chris Conley

Even though there is an injury history with Morse, he has missed about 1/4th of the games in his first 4 years, Morse remains one of the best centers in the league and I am expecting the Chiefs to offer to keep him. Hopefully with a contract that is kind of upper mid tier for centers, maybe in the $7-8M range, for no more than 4 years and possibly with some injury guarantees.

The only other player on the list I would offer to bring back would be Sherman, and that’s only if the price is a good fit. Sherman is a special teams stalwart, playing in almost 75% of ST snaps. I also think he could be utilized more in the offense as he has demonstrated to have great hands coming out of the backfield.

In my opinion, the other five players can be easily replaced and in a few cases, need to be replaced.

The other 3 UFAs are defensive players:

• DL Allen Bailey
• LB Dee Ford
• DB Steven Nelson

Bailey will turn 30 shortly after the beginning of the new League year and while he is dependable and consistent, I hope the Chiefs are looking to upgrade the play of their defensive line, but then again Bailey may be a great fit in new Defensive Coordinator Spagnuolo’s defense.

The Chiefs should be looking to upgrade from Nelson, short, slow corners that consistently get burned deep and lead the League in penalties just aren’t a team asset.

Dee Ford or Justin Houston?

The conundrum is what to do with Dee Ford? Will he be a fit in the new defense? What will it cost to keep him as a Chief? Do the Chiefs use the franchise tag and commit over half of their available cap space to tag him? Spotrac and OTC are showing an expected cap space for the Chiefs of about $26-28M.

Some solutions bantered about are to cut Houston (which would give about $14M of cap space and add $7.1M of dead money) and tag Ford to get one more year out of Ford. It would actually be more cost effective to just keep Houston one more year. As of right now, Houston is possibly a better fit if the Chiefs do switch to a 4-3 defense. Without question, Houston is better at setting the edge and better against the run, but Ford is the best speed rusher on the team.

Another scenario is to Franchise tag, and then trade Ford. The problem then is the tag would use well over half of the Chiefs expected available cap space, thereby leaving the potential of the Chiefs missing out on a player or players at the beginning of free agency, if a trade can’t be worked out immediately. That would be a pretty big risk to take, although with the tag deadline 8 days prior to the start of the new league year, a trade could be worked out in principle during the “legal tampering” period. One then has to ask, what can be gotten in a trade? I don’t think any team would give a 1st round pick for Ford, a 2nd would probably be be best we could hope for. I would be in favor of this if the Chiefs had an extra 10-15 mil. of cap space, but since we don’t yet know the 2019 salary cap and it appears the Chiefs have very little carry over from 2018, then Franchise tagging Ford could turn out to be a thorn in the side of revamping the defense.

There have been some that think restructuring Houston, and/or Eric Berry, would be a good alternative. Restructuring, while giving some immediate cap relief, almost always involves more money and more years added to a current contract, and since both Berry and Houston are already 30 years of age and appear to be slowing down, both with injury concerns, this isn’t something that is going to help the team get younger and better.

In the end, I don’t think the Chiefs will keep both Ford and Houston, and who knows, they may not keep either one. I’m sure Brett Veach and Andy Reid have some ideas about what they’re going to do, so we’ll be doing our best to be patient and see what lies ahead.

Paul Pulley — ArrowheadOne