Laddie Morse
It’s the time of year when every team in the NFL is working out a path to the Super Bowl. GMs across the league are trying to figure out who to keep and who to jettison. Even though the Kansas City Chiefs have just won the Super Bowl, their coaches, GM and office staff are trying to figure out the same thing. What has become a conundrum for the Chiefs is: do they make an offer to DT Chris Jones and/or CB L’Jarius Sneed, or do they let them each walk in Free Agency which begins on March 11th or March 13. If you buy into the idea that teams are allowed to begin to contact Free Agents on March 11 and start the contract talks… or if you buy into the idea that teams must wait until March 13 to do that… you have your answer. The Chiefs were once the victim of a league “Tampering” charge. Bleacher Report said:
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“The loss of draft picks wasn’t the only penalty the league dealt to the Chiefs for tampering with [Jeremy] Maclin… head coach Andy Reid was fined $75,000, general manager John Dorsey was fined $25,000, and the team as a whole was fined $250,000.”
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The team fine was reduced to $200,000 and Reid’s fine was set at $60,000, but damage was done. Maclin had one good year in 2016 (1,088 receiving yards) and a not so good year in 2017 (536 receiving yards) before he moved on the the Ravens where he finished his career. Aside from losing the money, the Chiefs lost a 3rd round pick in 2016 and a 6th round pick in 2017. Ouch!
You have to wonder if losing those picks had something to do with John Dorsey losing his job in June of 2017?
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Hurting or Helping?
The new NFL salary cap has been set at $255.4M for the coming year. According to sportrac.com the Chiefs now have $28+M available in salary cap funds. The extra amount should help the Chiefs cause becasue the original cap was figutred to be around $245M.
Seven teams have a negative salary cap number including: the Cowboys, Brown, Broncos, Chargers, Dolphins, Saints and Bills. That’s important to know. Here are the negative Salary Cap numbers for the bottom seven teams provided by sportrac.com:
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Adapted from sportrac.com Photo Credit
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It would seem that those team’s Free Agents are the one’s to try and sign because their Home team won’t likely put up much of a fight… or should I say, “can’t.” Here’s a listing of those bottom seven teams and their free agents:
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The Browns had more, but I deleted them to save space…
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It’s also worth noting that many of these teams listed above are competitors of the Chiefs. A win in signing a Free Agent away from one of them is a victory for K.C.. That’s how you win in the offseason!
What is surprising… or I should say “amazing”… is that Veach and his team have an opinion about every single one of these players and have had that opinion ever since they came out in the draft. That’s a lot of data gathering since there are 32 teams in the league and each team has 51 under contract… at least. That works out to 1,632 players with the top 51 for each team being counted.
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BTW, $255.4M times 32 teams equals
$8,172.8 Billion dollars the owners are
collectively shelling out to the players.
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Note: that only includes the top 51 for each team, while we know more players than that are on each team’s roster.
The Chiefs staff either thinks these players fit in the Chiefs system — and mesh in the locker room — or they don’t. In any case, I won’t be at all surprised if a couple of these players, above, make their way onto the Chiefs roster this coming offseason.
With Patrick Mahomes on the Chiefs roster, the GM and his team must hit on a high number of their draft picks in order for them to continue to be successful. By successful, I mean… making it back to the Super Bowl and winning it. PFF calls this NFL Wide Receiver Draft Class,
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“… one of the deepest talent
groups we have this draft season.”
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If the Chiefs decide to go for a wide receiver in the first round, they can improve their WR group without paying a lot for it. That should free up cap money to pay Chris Jones, or even L’Jarius Sneed, if that’s possible. By getting a Free Agent — listed above — to sign for a sweet deal, because who doesn’t want to play for a team that is headed back to the Super Bowl? Also, FAs may want to get in on the Dynasty identity and design or be heard from the “I deserve to be in the Hall of Fame” pulpit? If it was me, I’d be all in on that.
To answer the question, will helping the offense this offseason hurt the defense? If Brett Veach plays his cards right — and we have many years to show that he knows how to do that — he should be able to re-establish this Offense as being one of the best in the league, while simultaneously keeping the Defense at or near the top of the league as well. With DC Steve Spagnuolo and his staff stearing the ship it’s hard to see it falling off a cliff.
Go Chiefs!
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Laddie Morse — ArrowheadOne
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