Kansas City Chiefs Free Agent Focus: Safety · Paul Pulley

Kansas City Chiefs Free Agent Focus: Safety · Paul Pulley

With Ron Parker being released on Monday, a move that created almost $5M cap space, the Chiefs are the in search of a free agent safety to fill in the void after Parker leaves. The retuning safeties from last year include;

• Eric Berry: A top of the league safety returning from an achilles injury.
• Dan Sorenson: A valuable reserve and special role player.
• Eric Murray: Slightly undersized and coming into his third year, this is the time to prove his value to the defense.
• Leon McQuay III: A 2017, 6th round draft pick, McQuay never made it onto the field until week 17 vs Denver. His play that game was not disappointing, finishing the game with 4 tackles and 1 pass defensed.

The Chiefs have two more to watch:

• Devin Chappell: A 2017 UDFA from Oregon St.
• Jordan Sterns: A 2017 UDFA from Oklahoma St.

Both Chappell and Sterns spent the 2017 season on injured reserve. Also both Chappell and, even more so, Sterns, are more suited to the position of Strong Safety.

With Eric Berry expected to be our starting strong safety, I don’t believe we have a player on the current roster to take on the role of the starting Free Safety being vacated by the expected release of Ron Parker.

Finding an Option for the Chiefs Free Safety:

With Parker included, the Chiefs have more salary cap dollars invested in safeties than any other team in the NFL. As Eric Berry is the highest paid safety in the NFL, it isn’t financially appropriate to sign another safety to a huge contract, therefore we need to look for an above average player with some experience that is not a top tier player that will command a large contract.

My initial goal was to find a player on the backside of his career that still has some game. A player that could produce for one or two years while we find a replacement in the draft. This player would still need to have a cap hit no larger than about half of the almost $7M, 2018 cap number of Parker. This strategy would involve using an early round draft pick on a safety this year, or possibly drafting a safety in the 1st round of 2019 with starter potential.

A Look at Some of the 2018 Free Agent Safeties:

Since I looked at Safeties with a wide range of experience, I chose to concentrate on the statistics from the 2017 season only. These players are all part of the Free Agent Safety list from overthecap.com:

Note: all stats except DSC are from nfl.com. Snap counts are from footballoutsiders.com

Ron Parker’s stats are included to show what we need to attempt to replace or even exceed. Eric Murray and Leon McQuay are included to show the production of the Chiefs current reserves at free safety.

I initially had Kenny Vaccaro on the list, but he is more strictly a strong safety, plus I believe he will ultimately sign a contract that will be out of reach of the Chiefs financially. I also think that Eric Reid and Tre Boston will eventually sign high dollar contracts that will be out of the range of what the Chiefs should spend.

A Change of Focus: From Old(er) to Young(er)

Looking at the Free Agent listing on spotrac, they show a market value for some players at their respective positions.

Three such safety listings show:

• Tre Boston with a  market value of 5-Y/$41M, with an average annual salary of $8.2M/year
• Eric Reid with a market value of 4-Y/$34+M, with an average annual salary of $8.6M/year
• Tyvon Branch with a value of $5M for 1 year.

As stated earlier, my initial thought was to find an older safety as a stop gap type player for one or two years until a quality draft pick could be selected. Players such as Nate Allen, Darius Butler or even Tyvon Branch, but at 5 million dollars per year, I believe we are better off to go younger if that deems possible. Add in that Butler will be 32 this month, Allen missed most of last year with a calf injury and Branch tore an ACL in November, these are probably not the best option.

Considering the Chiefs can’t afford the best of the young group and the best of the older group leave something to be desired, I started looking harder at the production levels of the rest. That brought me to Bradley McDougald and Adrian Phillips.

McDougald was a 2013 UDFA for the Chiefs, but was picked up off waivers by the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, where he played through 2016. He then spent last season with the Seattle Seahawks. He has been very productive the past three seasons and with the Seahawks backfield in turmoil, I would expect them to do their best to retain McDougald.

Adrian Phillips was signed by the San Diego Chargers (currently the Los Angeles Chargers) as an UDFA in 2014. He spent most of his rookie year on the practice squad, but has seen increasing playing time since. In 2017, Phillips played the 6th most snaps in the Chargers secondary and put up very good numbers in a limited role. As a side note, it seems the Chargers spend more time in a dime defense than even the Chiefs DC Bob Sutton.

As can be seen in the chart above, Phillips play was comparable to Ron Parkers (statistically speaking) but playing only half as many snaps. If Chiefs GM Brett Veach were to offer a contract to Phillips, I would expect it to be in the range of what the Houston Texans offered Andre Hal last year. Andre Hal was a 7th round draft pick in 2014 and received a 3-Y/$15M extension from the Texans. If we feel that Phillips could fill the roll previously held by Ron Parker, I would offer a contract for 3-Y/$15.75M, with a signing bonus of $2.25M and $7.75M in guarantees.

A contract could look like this:

With a contract structured in this way, it could be viewed as a one year trial with an easy out, but also have him locked up for three years if he works out as well as expected.

The caveat; it’s a large one!

Since Adrian Phillips spent most of his rookie season on the Chargers practice squad, he currently has only three accrued seasons in the NFL and therefore is a Restricted Free Agent (RFA).

As of this writing, the Chargers have not placed a tender on Phillips (that I am aware of), but I would expect them to do so prior to the start of the new league year. Since Phillips was an UDFA, most likely the tender would be a Low tender, or Right of First Refusal. In that case, if the Chiefs were to sign Phillips to a contract the Chargers did not match, there would not be any compensation owed. The Chargers could place a 1st or 2nd round tender on Phillips and take his signing out of consideration, but I would not expect them to do this.

While the Chargers have a fair amount of cap space, they will be wanting to sign Boston to a long term deal as their starting free safety and with Phillips further down their depth chart, they will likely see him as expendable, or replaceable via the draft.

Unless Veach is able to draft a starting caliber Safety early in this years draft, our options seem to be limited for this season, unless we wait for roster cut downs after training camp and attempt to bring in someone and give them a crash course in playing Sutton’s D.

What do you think GM Brett Veach has planned for Safety?

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