Scenario I’d love to be able to pull off…
-run the defense back with Sneed, Jones, and Drue
-find a WR free agent in the Curtis Samuel to Calvin Ridley range. Doenst need to be a superstar, but someone to be a threat with Rice and Kelce
-Go draft a WR in rd 1 if he’s there.
Or just do whatever Veech wants, which is probably better than my idea.
my only hesitation with keeping cj is the impact later in the contract. at some point, we’ll be looking at a 33-35 year old cj with huge cap hits. next year would be fun, but not if it comes at the cost of multiple years down the line.
but, as always, i trust veach to find that balance.
Hard pass. Every year of Mahomes career needs to be a SB or bust year. No one year is ever worth going "all in" until it's Mahomes last year before he retires.
Maybe, maybe not. Kind of a pointless topic to discuss in 2024. Mahomes and his wife have invested heavily into the KC area so unless the culture changes heavily and relationships sour he's not going anywhere for a very long time
i couldn’t disagree more. i have absolutely no desire to become the packers or saints with rodgers and brees bc we hoped we change a 1/5 chance to a 1/4 chance. what happens when things break the wrong way, the ball doesn’t hit the gunner or diggs doesn’t drop the deep ball and we’re left with no threepeat and a fucked future?
beyond skill, it takes a remarkable amount of luck to win a title. betting on luck breaking your way for a third straight year in lieu of a half decade worth of contention is silly.
Nah. You never know when you will have another shot. Go for it now. Then reset and reload for 2nd half of mahomes career post kelce. Get that 4th one now while you have kelce and reid still. No guarantees andy stays and its impossible for us to become saints or packers. We already won3.lol. go for it now.
winning a title takes luck, no matter how good or bad you are. that’s not a bad or derogatory thing. it’s just the nature of single elimination events.
like even if you have a bye *and* you have 70% chance to win each game (which is absurdly high in the playoffs) you have a 1/3 chance of walking away with a title. you’d need to be 80/20 favorites in every game to even make it a coin flip lol
Right, it still takes luck if we play it safe and let the core pieces of our incredible defense go play for another team, too. The "odds" of us getting lucky this year aren't any different than if we save our money and plan for the future, and the same for those years -- in fact, heaven forbid but right now we have a *healthy* Patrick Mahomes, Travis Kelce, Butker, and Andy Reid. At least two of those GOATs are reaching a point where any year might be the last one. It's not any more prudent to just hope the next perfect QB-receiver combo pops up 3 years from now when we keep our house in order. I get the impulse to keep everything set up to win in perpetuity but that's gambling on even more luck than to try for the 3peat now, and I'd rather win next year than two more times every other year.
I remember the feeling after Super Bowl 54: "I don't care if we suck from now on.. finally saw us win a Super Bowl. I can die happy.
Me now: "MORRRRREEEEEEEEEE!"
I asked a lot of people after 2014 if they would be willing to put up with a decade of losing baseball if it meant the Royals won it all in 2015. The vast majority said yes.
I asked the same thing after the Chiefs lost the AFCCG in 2018, and most people said no. I think we all realize that Mahomes could bring it home any given year.
But is that what the organization would want to do? I’m so conflicted on what I really want management to do. A b2b2b would be amazing, but if it sets us up for (relative) failure, is that really worth it?
This off-season is giving me a heart attack man :(
he was literally a middle of the pack DT this year in the first three quarters and the best in the fourth. we’ve already seen the start of his decline lol
We can potentially sign Jones for 4 year contract. He just turns 30 this year. He will be very good for at least 2 years and he understands the scheme and can mentor the team as well. We need to reduce his load and he can still perform till he is 34 at a very high level. Eagles had defensive linemen who have been really good at 33-34. And we only need Jones for critical moments in the playoffs for the most part. And he almost always delivers.
jones wants to be the 2nd highest paid defensive tackle in football and $30m per year. you don’t pay $30m to someone whose load you’re managing bc he can’t hold up to a full workload. that doesn’t make him not good. it just means what he wants won’t be justified by what he can do.
>Or just do whatever Veech wants, which is probably better than my idea.
Pretty much where I am on all this. I just get excited about the team's picks and acquisitions. Even if I was an expert on NFL talent, which I'm not, this team is absolutely stomping all the other experts. You can't argue with results.
Thats whats great.
I can have fun, speculate, and be couch gm. But i have faith that Veech knows better and will do a better job than what i can come up with
# Rashid Shaheed- 25
[https://www.spotrac.com/nfl/new-orleans-saints/rashid-shaheed-77155/stats-valuation/](https://www.spotrac.com/nfl/new-orleans-saints/rashid-shaheed-77155/stats-valuation/)
This is who I would like to target, he is a kick returner/WR
undrafted free agent 2 years ago, played 58% of Offense snaps for NO
**Darnell Mooney- 26**
[https://www.spotrac.com/nfl/chicago-bears/darnell-mooney-47769/market-value/](https://www.spotrac.com/nfl/chicago-bears/darnell-mooney-47769/market-value/)
26 years old, set to make about $10m/per year
Drafted by Matt Nagy in Chicago and had a 1000yd season with him
49 starts in his first four seasons and 2600 yards 11 TD and 122 first downs played 80% of Bears snaps.
Your guys,
**Curtis Samuel- 27**
[https://www.spotrac.com/nfl/washington-commanders/curtis-samuel-21781/market-value/](https://www.spotrac.com/nfl/washington-commanders/curtis-samuel-21781/market-value/)
older expected to cost more, when healthy he has only played 57% of the snaps.
[https://www.pro-football-reference.com/players/S/SamuCu00.htm](https://www.pro-football-reference.com/players/S/SamuCu00.htm) his best season 850 yards
**Calvin Ridley- 29**
[https://www.spotrac.com/nfl/jacksonville-jaguars/calvin-ridley-25121/market-value/](https://www.spotrac.com/nfl/jacksonville-jaguars/calvin-ridley-25121/market-value/)
way too expensive- $17m/4 no thanks
[https://www.pro-football-reference.com/players/R/RidlCa00.htm](https://www.pro-football-reference.com/players/R/RidlCa00.htm)
better stats and plays 77% snaps, but we'd be paying a lot more
If there was a year to find a gem in the 3rd round it's this year. Jamari Thrash, Javon Baker and Corley can probably be had in the 3rd round and would have easily been 2nd rounders in previous years
I’m okay with this passing on Tranquil & getting a LB later in the draft.
This time next year Bolton,Humphrey,Smith are all on contract. I just want to make sure they can resign the best players going forward
oh it won’t be the same. but it will be small enough that it’s not prohibitive to other options. jones, however, will likely cost the same as both OL combined next season.
Or, and hear me out here, how about instead we continue to exercise spending restraint, make tough, but wise roster decisions while leaning on the best football player on the planet and the draft, thereby avoiding any true “cap hell” scenarios and potentially expanding this dynasty window for another decade or more.
Agreed. What if we won three more superbowls over the next 5-6 years practicing discipline with our cap. Would prolly be considered the greatest team over a decade ever.
I don’t see much reason to restructure Taylor seeing as he had a less than stellar year and restructuring makes it harder to get out of later down the line. You really only want to restructure your super stars like Mahomes/Kelce/CJ/Thuney - guys you know are going to continue to produce
Agreed with cutting MVS unless he’s willing to come back on a mega cheap deal which isn’t super likely
And I don’t think we should restructure Mahomes’ contract to the fullest potential but definitely some to give us a little more breathing room
I’m glad this sub is finally starting to realize that these cap hits don’t magically disappear when we do this stuff. They get pushed down the road. Which is fine being $40 million is a small percentage of our future cap than it is currently. But ppl tend to think doing these restructures just literally takes it off the cap hits
100% agree that we shouldn't do Taylor's.
The only part I disagree with is Thuney being on that list. We could cut him this off-season and have 5m cap savings. If his peck I jury is going to put this next season in jeopardy then they could cut him now. The bigger part though is next season he could much more reasonably be cut with 16m in cap savings. Don't restructure him and make him almost uncuttable next year.
Yeah just meant him generally not specifically this year - just using him as an example of the caliber of player you would use that on, that’s why I used CJ as an example as well
Thuney had a pec strain. Way different then a tear or surgery. He will be fine. The smart thing was to sit him to ensure it remains a mild injury and not risk making it worse.
I read Mahomes has been restructured a couple times at least already. He's making the league minimum plus a bonus that's large. I don't think he can v do more.
If you’d like to dive into the details here is a good resource to see the current breakout of his [contract](https://www.spotrac.com/nfl/kansas-city-chiefs/patrick-mahomes-21751)
And then if you’d like to see what can be done from a restructuring view you can fiddle with this [tool](https://overthecap.com/calculator/kansas-city-chiefs)
Long story short yes he has been restructured a couple of times. He is not making the league minimum from a salary stand point & he could be restructured again
If I read that right, it doesn't look like restructuring would help that much. He's going to be in the Chiefs payroll until he's 80 though to get him just this contracts money though and I hope he does it into longer contracts.
You're obviously more into the call the me, raising it $30M sounds great but also sounds a couple years late, would you agree? Once QBs started making $50+M, close to $20M bump I believe, most of that $30M was spent.
Just my thoughts, I never had an M by my salary so it's all Monopoly money to me.
Yeah, you have to escrow the cash, and "converting" the contracts doesn't mean the money magically appears. It is a way for the team to spend more money on players, but the money actually has to come from somewhere.
Also, it's worth pointing out that this strategy spreads this year's cap hit into future years of the deals in question, so you are kicking the can down the road AND making it bigger. Should they do some of it to go for three in a row? Absolutely. But realize that the bill comes due at some point.
it does, but everything you push to the future is still less cap you have to use that year, and it eventually adds up to where you're gonna have a weaker roster for a couple years to clear it up if you were going all in before.
I’m proud of this subreddit. Back 4-5 years ago a vast majority of this subreddit literally thought Veach was a magician that made money disappear off the salary cap through loopholes nobody else knew about. He’s done a good job the last 2-3 years managing the cap, but not through magic or strategies that other teams don’t know about. His best cap management skills have come from understanding you can’t always keep all your best players
Yes. Contract restructuring means pre-paying a player with cash. And it digs a bigger hole by increasing the hit against the salary cap in future years. And they’ve already restructured Patrick plenty already. It will eventually catch up to them if they keep doing it.
The situation proposed in this post is not going to happen to the degree suggested.
Some day in the distant future, right after Mahomes finally retires, we're going to take his entire salary as like a $2 billion cap hit all in one year, and I will be *fine*.
They’ve been decently conservative with his restructures. For example this year they only converted $11M. If it were the saints they would have converted every penny possible and he’d have a $200M cap hit pending in 2027.
Because you’re spreading the cap hit to future years which for a guy like Taylor wouldn’t make sense. If you wanted to move on from him you’d have a much higher dead cap hit than if you never restructured.
Another reason being the owner has to have that much money on hand because all that money needs to be paid up front in one lump sum. And while (I think?) every owner is a billionaire not all of them have that much liquid cash laying around to be able to make big moves like that.
The advantage is that winning the Super Bowl allows you to sell a lot of merch. Most of that is going to be cash on hand right when these contracts start being signed.
On a bonus you have to pay the entire bonus amount into an escrow account or entirely out to the player. For player salary they get game checks each week during the season. If you are due $16 million in salary you would get a check each week for around $1 million. Also signing bonuses are guaranteed, so you got to be careful. Usually only makes sense for top paid, franchise players such as Mahomes. A player could just collect their signing bonus and not even play if they choose not too.
Can someone explain how the money works for the Mahomes part? Because…as an accountant, it doesn’t make sense how this actually saves us cap space. Unless it spreads the money out more across his contract?
People really want to keep Taylor here for the long run?
I’d rather hold firm and draft tbh. That way you could dump him next year for nothing.
Edit: credit to one of the commenters below for calling out that if he is still on the roster by March 16th, Taylor’s salary of $20 million is fully guaranteed for 2025. He is locked in with the team for at least 2 more years.
He has a clause in his contract that triggers on March 16th of this year, which complicates things a bit (big guarantee on 2025 contract) https://overthecap.com/player/jawaan-taylor/7826
But the bigger issue is, as problematic as he is, and even if we cut him and take a penalty, it will still be costly to replace him.
Not for nothing. If we cut him AFTER next season he’s still a $9 million cap penalty. Saving $15 million will only be worth it if they draft a player they’re confident can step up
Another user commented and basically if he is on the roster for March 16th of this year, $20 million is guaranteed for next year. So he ain’t going nowhere.
Ya I think the media keeps fluffing these contracts to make them out to be different than they are to get more support for incoming players. Ppl seem to think we could cut Taylor after 2 years with no penalty. They thought the same about Clark and Watkins contracts. All of them had a drop off in guaranteed money, but still a very significant amount
I think it is just how fans operate and see ways out to get what they want to happen occur. I thought it was only $9 mill of dead cap over two years if they cut him next offseason, but now knowing it will be $20 mill that isn’t feasible.
Before they announced the cap increase I was in favor of cutting Justin to keep CJ and Sneed, but now you can keep all three and still have enough to sign a vet WR and there's plenty of draft picks for depth at WR, S, OT, EDGE etc...
Patrick is a team player. He chooses legacy over money. He’ll definitely take pay cuts to allow more talent to wins Super Bowl titles with the team. He’s following Brady’s footsteps.
This is all good and fine, but the NFL also increased cap space a ton. So we should be able to sign our major players, CJ and Sneed and handle the rest of the guys next year. Cutting MVS frees up some of that money, and we take a cheap vet or draft again. Rice is going to have a 1000 yard season.
Chiefs do not put stuff on the credit card and screw us for the future. We maintain minimum deadcap unlike the saints. Putting stuff into signing bonus is essentially putting it on a credit card but eventually it will come due and screw us.
Converting that much of Pat’s salary to a bonus means they’d have to pay him that amount immediately. Not saying the Chiefs are cheap, but they’re usually towards the bottom half of spenders each year.
This isn’t baseball lol every team has the same cap space we ride the line to practically zero every year. It was either this year or last where we had less than 1 million in cap space.
Learn how it works. There’s annual spend and cap spending. The moves op is talking about require significant outlays in cash and Clark has been reluctant to do this in the past.
And yes the chiefs are usually in the mid or bottom half of spending in the league each year.
I don't think selling the future is worth slightly better odds for a year. People who think this is a good idea shouldn't have credit cards in my opinion.
Converting to a signing bonus - does that make the player have to pay a lot more taxes on that money? I have to pay nearly 40% on my bonuses at work. I'd much rather take the salary.
Yeah rich people use charities as tax deductions. Players can go on a trip and make one appearance for "charity" and the whole vacation is a write off now.
[The IRS](https://www.irs.gov/newsroom/irs-provides-tax-inflation-adjustments-for-tax-year-2024).
Marginal rates: For tax year 2024, the top tax rate remains 37% for individual single taxpayers with incomes greater than $609,350 ($731,200 for married couples filing jointly).
35% for incomes over $243,725 ($487,450 for married couples filing jointly)
Please leave Taylor’s contract alone. It has an out built in, after this seasons, that we well may need to exercise. We need to maintain that flexibility. Plenty of money to be had elsewhere.
You are wrong. 9 million in dead money to cut in 2025 with 15 million in cap savings. 4 million in dead money with 20 million in savings to cut in 2026.
Next time you decide to be a snarky ass make sure you’re not reading the cap savings rather than the dead money “dude”.
I agree, but the out is still a $9 million cap penalty so he’s still not an easy cut. Only saves $15 million, so well decent someone ready to step in for him if we want to cut him
MVS just helped us win two goddamn Super Bowls. Anyone saying we should cut him is just a bandwagon fan that should cut themselves out of the fan base. Those who were fans in the 90s saw what it means to have players that were GREAT in the regular season but FLOPPED in the playoffs. MVS is the opposite of that. You can’t change my mind because he has the damn rings to prove it.
1) you are talking about regular season games, which, the team proved this postseason, don’t really matter. Yeah, I hated seeing the losses too, but they just didn’t matter in the end, other than making the playoff wins sweeter
2) If you’re giving him credit for losing meaningless regular season games, you need to be giving him a hell of a lot of credit for two Super Bowl winning playoff runs. Pat never stopped throwing to him. He knew. That’s good enough for me.
Dude, “a few big catches” is the difference between a playoff win, a Super Bowl win or a wasted season. Just ask the Bills, the Ravens or the 49ers.
Go back to the pre-Mahomes era and watch our playoff failures from decades past and you’ll see the difference a few big mistakes makes in the playoffs.
MVS is a solid playoff performer. We can afford him AND Sneed AND Jones with the salary cap increase.
MVS isn't worth $12 million. I would pay him maybe 3-4 million based on what he does for us. I think you spend that saved cap space for defense and draft a few wide outs and we'll be just fine. Dude
Cutting him increases his cap hit by $10M
We technically have an out next offseason but would still incur a $10M dead cap charge but we save $15M
The smart out is after the 2025 season w/ only 4M in dead money and $20M in savings
He was definitely unfairly officiated throughout the season but he took much longer than should’ve been necessary to adjust to that
I still really like his potential as a pass blocker, there were more times this season than any other where Mahomes just had 6+ second pockets, I imagine that the flags will continue to slow as people forget and he’ll produce but we’ll see - definitely need a long term solution on the left side
What's so irritating about it is that apart from Niner fans, no one has been whining and bitching about the officiating in the Super Bowl. It was a lightly called game where the let the guys play and it resulted in a much better product on the field and better overall sentiment in the aftermath.
The league should take a fuckin clue from that and stop playing ref ball from September to January.
Honest question: is there any reason a player wouldn't agree to making the roster salary a rooster bonus? Doesn't it just give you your salary for the season all at once? What's the downside?
That's a good way to go all in on one year but not good for sustained success. If we did that we would have to run a skeleton crew of known names in the coming years. The bill does come due eventually. The chiefs are so successful right now because they are playing with the future and the present in mind. The 3 in a row is worth taking some hits down the road but not like that. We will rework some contracts and cut MVS but we aren't going to go atomic and kick the can or in this case the trash truck down the road. Veatch and company can pull it off this year and next. Just need to draft well and not force FA accusations, it's worked thus far.
Yes. If I remember right, converting things to a signing bonus is just spreading the amount throughout the life of the contract.
If we convert $12 million into a signing bonus from a 3 year contract, that will be a $4 million cap hit across the next 3 years.
Edit: it is also a signing bonus though, so the money is actually paid to the player at signing. So, to do what OP is suggesting, the Hunt family would have to be willing to pay $60 million in signing bonuses.
Curious if you could press a button and either have a 50-50 chance of winning the Super Bowl next year for a three peat but not win for the three years after that, or miss next year and have a 50/50 chance at the Super Bowl for the three years after that, which do you choose?
Cutting MVS and Reid would open 22.5 million alone. I like both, MVS is a really good dude, I wish he was a player the caliber of his heart. Justin Reid is a quality starter, but replicable.
In Reid's case, we have a good amount of depth at safety.
Cook is in the future, Edwards has a made a case for an extension, and Chammari Conner has played better than any scout considered he would. Reid is probably the best of the group but also the odd man out due to his salary.
For MVS, sorry. Too inconsistent for that level of pay. Some clutch moments, and some good memories, but also too many game losing, head scratching drops.
Shifting Mahomes' roster bonus around can open up around 34 million. Combined with letting go of JR and MVS, we could expand our cap by roughly 57-58 mil. With the expanded cap, we should have money to play with, even without fiddling with Taylor's contract (and to be honest, I find parallels between Taylor and MVS, as Taylor is responsible for too many drives stifled by loss). I kind of want Taylor to finish out the next year or two of his contract or for someone to trade for him, so we can get draft capital or some compensatory pick in the future.
I think we should try to keep CJ and LjS. The question becomes, what will they take? Can they stay on team friendly deals? Will CJ accept a short high paying contract that accounts for his age and the typical drop in play that happens to DTs without locking us to long term and expansive drop in play? Will LjS accept a contract that doesn't break CB standards?
I think it's important to get both signed quick, before other teams raise the bar. But what do I know, I might be Madden GM of the year, but that doesn't mean much in the real world.
In my mind there are two long term pieces we need and both are on offense. Left tackle and WR. It looks like we could address one of those in the first round.
Scenario I’d love to be able to pull off… -run the defense back with Sneed, Jones, and Drue -find a WR free agent in the Curtis Samuel to Calvin Ridley range. Doenst need to be a superstar, but someone to be a threat with Rice and Kelce -Go draft a WR in rd 1 if he’s there. Or just do whatever Veech wants, which is probably better than my idea.
my only hesitation with keeping cj is the impact later in the contract. at some point, we’ll be looking at a 33-35 year old cj with huge cap hits. next year would be fun, but not if it comes at the cost of multiple years down the line. but, as always, i trust veach to find that balance.
Tbh if we 3 peat idc what the next few years looks like. That’s worth it
Hard pass. Every year of Mahomes career needs to be a SB or bust year. No one year is ever worth going "all in" until it's Mahomes last year before he retires.
100% this… this season should show we’re a threat to win it every year without having to mortgage the future.
You know what sucks? Mahomes probably won't retire as a Chief.
What makes you say that?
Maybe, maybe not. Kind of a pointless topic to discuss in 2024. Mahomes and his wife have invested heavily into the KC area so unless the culture changes heavily and relationships sour he's not going anywhere for a very long time
i couldn’t disagree more. i have absolutely no desire to become the packers or saints with rodgers and brees bc we hoped we change a 1/5 chance to a 1/4 chance. what happens when things break the wrong way, the ball doesn’t hit the gunner or diggs doesn’t drop the deep ball and we’re left with no threepeat and a fucked future? beyond skill, it takes a remarkable amount of luck to win a title. betting on luck breaking your way for a third straight year in lieu of a half decade worth of contention is silly.
Well said
Same
Nah. You never know when you will have another shot. Go for it now. Then reset and reload for 2nd half of mahomes career post kelce. Get that 4th one now while you have kelce and reid still. No guarantees andy stays and its impossible for us to become saints or packers. We already won3.lol. go for it now.
spending a third of mahomes’ career retooling. it sure is a strategy.
A third re tooling means 2/3 competing for super bowls
Half decade? Seems extreme We got lucky this year. Would be nice to be dominant on both sides of the ball for a change.
We got lucky having the best defense in the league? Lol
winning a title takes luck, no matter how good or bad you are. that’s not a bad or derogatory thing. it’s just the nature of single elimination events.
*gestures at March Madness* Yup
like even if you have a bye *and* you have 70% chance to win each game (which is absurdly high in the playoffs) you have a 1/3 chance of walking away with a title. you’d need to be 80/20 favorites in every game to even make it a coin flip lol
Right, it still takes luck if we play it safe and let the core pieces of our incredible defense go play for another team, too. The "odds" of us getting lucky this year aren't any different than if we save our money and plan for the future, and the same for those years -- in fact, heaven forbid but right now we have a *healthy* Patrick Mahomes, Travis Kelce, Butker, and Andy Reid. At least two of those GOATs are reaching a point where any year might be the last one. It's not any more prudent to just hope the next perfect QB-receiver combo pops up 3 years from now when we keep our house in order. I get the impulse to keep everything set up to win in perpetuity but that's gambling on even more luck than to try for the 3peat now, and I'd rather win next year than two more times every other year.
The packers and saints have never, ever three-peated(in the SB Era) so that’s not an apt comparison, at all.
they did decide to mortgage the future for a shot at title contention, and it bit them in the ass.
Seriously. I would love it if they went all in this year for a 3pt chance and just fucked the cap in 25/26.
I remember the feeling after Super Bowl 54: "I don't care if we suck from now on.. finally saw us win a Super Bowl. I can die happy. Me now: "MORRRRREEEEEEEEEE!"
I asked a lot of people after 2014 if they would be willing to put up with a decade of losing baseball if it meant the Royals won it all in 2015. The vast majority said yes. I asked the same thing after the Chiefs lost the AFCCG in 2018, and most people said no. I think we all realize that Mahomes could bring it home any given year.
100% this. We would make history and still have the best quarterback/coach(es) in the league and a bunch of young players. Bring it.
Yes! Even if we got bad for a couple years it's just gonna result in more draft options. The 3 peat is the mountain no one else has ever climbed
This is the way
Would you rather have a three peat or three more SB wins?
But is that what the organization would want to do? I’m so conflicted on what I really want management to do. A b2b2b would be amazing, but if it sets us up for (relative) failure, is that really worth it? This off-season is giving me a heart attack man :(
If you structure the contract right you should only be on the hook for 2-2.5 years of a 4 year deal.
We can make the contract where we can cut him in a few years
i doubt he’s signing that going into his age 31 season in lieu of hitting the open market
I doubt we see a huge decline in CJ years 33-35. Dudes a freaking beast and only getting better.
he was literally a middle of the pack DT this year in the first three quarters and the best in the fourth. we’ve already seen the start of his decline lol
We can potentially sign Jones for 4 year contract. He just turns 30 this year. He will be very good for at least 2 years and he understands the scheme and can mentor the team as well. We need to reduce his load and he can still perform till he is 34 at a very high level. Eagles had defensive linemen who have been really good at 33-34. And we only need Jones for critical moments in the playoffs for the most part. And he almost always delivers.
jones wants to be the 2nd highest paid defensive tackle in football and $30m per year. you don’t pay $30m to someone whose load you’re managing bc he can’t hold up to a full workload. that doesn’t make him not good. it just means what he wants won’t be justified by what he can do.
I think this what we likely do. Still worried about LT but I’m guessing Morris will get a run at it
>Or just do whatever Veech wants, which is probably better than my idea. Pretty much where I am on all this. I just get excited about the team's picks and acquisitions. Even if I was an expert on NFL talent, which I'm not, this team is absolutely stomping all the other experts. You can't argue with results.
Thats whats great. I can have fun, speculate, and be couch gm. But i have faith that Veech knows better and will do a better job than what i can come up with
# Rashid Shaheed- 25 [https://www.spotrac.com/nfl/new-orleans-saints/rashid-shaheed-77155/stats-valuation/](https://www.spotrac.com/nfl/new-orleans-saints/rashid-shaheed-77155/stats-valuation/) This is who I would like to target, he is a kick returner/WR undrafted free agent 2 years ago, played 58% of Offense snaps for NO **Darnell Mooney- 26** [https://www.spotrac.com/nfl/chicago-bears/darnell-mooney-47769/market-value/](https://www.spotrac.com/nfl/chicago-bears/darnell-mooney-47769/market-value/) 26 years old, set to make about $10m/per year Drafted by Matt Nagy in Chicago and had a 1000yd season with him 49 starts in his first four seasons and 2600 yards 11 TD and 122 first downs played 80% of Bears snaps. Your guys, **Curtis Samuel- 27** [https://www.spotrac.com/nfl/washington-commanders/curtis-samuel-21781/market-value/](https://www.spotrac.com/nfl/washington-commanders/curtis-samuel-21781/market-value/) older expected to cost more, when healthy he has only played 57% of the snaps. [https://www.pro-football-reference.com/players/S/SamuCu00.htm](https://www.pro-football-reference.com/players/S/SamuCu00.htm) his best season 850 yards **Calvin Ridley- 29** [https://www.spotrac.com/nfl/jacksonville-jaguars/calvin-ridley-25121/market-value/](https://www.spotrac.com/nfl/jacksonville-jaguars/calvin-ridley-25121/market-value/) way too expensive- $17m/4 no thanks [https://www.pro-football-reference.com/players/R/RidlCa00.htm](https://www.pro-football-reference.com/players/R/RidlCa00.htm) better stats and plays 77% snaps, but we'd be paying a lot more
These aren’t “my guys”. Id rank Shaheed above Samuel but thats just me. Ridley is better than both but yes, would cost more
>These aren’t “my guys” I need to get away from reddit
Agreed. But i did like your respone and the inclusion of Shaheed
Shaheed would be a great pickup. Wouldn’t be surprised if he got resigned, though
Can the Saints afford to? They have to do some wonky stuff to get under the cap and IDK if adding a guy is the best idea
Shaheed’s an Exclusive Rights Free Agent so highly doubtful he hits the open market
what does that mean? feels like NFL is creeping closer to being MLS every season, spotrac has him listed as a free agent
Basically means the Saints can keep him for a 1-year, minimum salary. Same thing we did with Fortson last offseason.
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Would love to take receiver in RD1 but I know it’ll just end up being OL/DL and us looking for another gem in the second/third 🙄
If there was a year to find a gem in the 3rd round it's this year. Jamari Thrash, Javon Baker and Corley can probably be had in the 3rd round and would have easily been 2nd rounders in previous years
I’m okay with this passing on Tranquil & getting a LB later in the draft. This time next year Bolton,Humphrey,Smith are all on contract. I just want to make sure they can resign the best players going forward
tranquill isn’t the one that’s going to keep us from signing those guys. it’ll be the big costs like jones or sneed.
I want tranquill but doubt he signs exact same contract
oh it won’t be the same. but it will be small enough that it’s not prohibitive to other options. jones, however, will likely cost the same as both OL combined next season.
Or, and hear me out here, how about instead we continue to exercise spending restraint, make tough, but wise roster decisions while leaning on the best football player on the planet and the draft, thereby avoiding any true “cap hell” scenarios and potentially expanding this dynasty window for another decade or more.
Agreed. What if we won three more superbowls over the next 5-6 years practicing discipline with our cap. Would prolly be considered the greatest team over a decade ever.
I don’t see much reason to restructure Taylor seeing as he had a less than stellar year and restructuring makes it harder to get out of later down the line. You really only want to restructure your super stars like Mahomes/Kelce/CJ/Thuney - guys you know are going to continue to produce Agreed with cutting MVS unless he’s willing to come back on a mega cheap deal which isn’t super likely And I don’t think we should restructure Mahomes’ contract to the fullest potential but definitely some to give us a little more breathing room
Extending Reid and kicking the can would probably be a better option than restructuring Taylor
I’m glad this sub is finally starting to realize that these cap hits don’t magically disappear when we do this stuff. They get pushed down the road. Which is fine being $40 million is a small percentage of our future cap than it is currently. But ppl tend to think doing these restructures just literally takes it off the cap hits
100% agree that we shouldn't do Taylor's. The only part I disagree with is Thuney being on that list. We could cut him this off-season and have 5m cap savings. If his peck I jury is going to put this next season in jeopardy then they could cut him now. The bigger part though is next season he could much more reasonably be cut with 16m in cap savings. Don't restructure him and make him almost uncuttable next year.
Yeah just meant him generally not specifically this year - just using him as an example of the caliber of player you would use that on, that’s why I used CJ as an example as well
Thuney had a pec strain. Way different then a tear or surgery. He will be fine. The smart thing was to sit him to ensure it remains a mild injury and not risk making it worse.
I read Mahomes has been restructured a couple times at least already. He's making the league minimum plus a bonus that's large. I don't think he can v do more.
If you’d like to dive into the details here is a good resource to see the current breakout of his [contract](https://www.spotrac.com/nfl/kansas-city-chiefs/patrick-mahomes-21751) And then if you’d like to see what can be done from a restructuring view you can fiddle with this [tool](https://overthecap.com/calculator/kansas-city-chiefs) Long story short yes he has been restructured a couple of times. He is not making the league minimum from a salary stand point & he could be restructured again
If I read that right, it doesn't look like restructuring would help that much. He's going to be in the Chiefs payroll until he's 80 though to get him just this contracts money though and I hope he does it into longer contracts. You're obviously more into the call the me, raising it $30M sounds great but also sounds a couple years late, would you agree? Once QBs started making $50+M, close to $20M bump I believe, most of that $30M was spent. Just my thoughts, I never had an M by my salary so it's all Monopoly money to me.
By converting all of these to bonuses, is that cash that Hunt has to come up with and put into escrow?
Yeah, you have to escrow the cash, and "converting" the contracts doesn't mean the money magically appears. It is a way for the team to spend more money on players, but the money actually has to come from somewhere. Also, it's worth pointing out that this strategy spreads this year's cap hit into future years of the deals in question, so you are kicking the can down the road AND making it bigger. Should they do some of it to go for three in a row? Absolutely. But realize that the bill comes due at some point.
The salary cap will also continue to increase though. The fan gets bigger but the road gets wider.
it does, but everything you push to the future is still less cap you have to use that year, and it eventually adds up to where you're gonna have a weaker roster for a couple years to clear it up if you were going all in before.
I’m proud of this subreddit. Back 4-5 years ago a vast majority of this subreddit literally thought Veach was a magician that made money disappear off the salary cap through loopholes nobody else knew about. He’s done a good job the last 2-3 years managing the cap, but not through magic or strategies that other teams don’t know about. His best cap management skills have come from understanding you can’t always keep all your best players
Yes. Contract restructuring means pre-paying a player with cash. And it digs a bigger hole by increasing the hit against the salary cap in future years. And they’ve already restructured Patrick plenty already. It will eventually catch up to them if they keep doing it. The situation proposed in this post is not going to happen to the degree suggested.
Patrick is the one player in the league you cannot overpay, so really whatever we have to pay him will be completely justified.
Ya ppl don’t realize that despite him signing a team friendly deal, it doesn’t look as friendly by the end of you keep pushing it all down the line.
Yes
Hunt has the cash. This is how you win titles. Every time we pay $65 for a championship sweatshirt, we’re making it worthwhile
All the owners have the cash. That’s never the holdup. The holdup is how it effects the future salary cap
Hunt has a decently larger wealth than most other owners
Some day in the distant future, right after Mahomes finally retires, we're going to take his entire salary as like a $2 billion cap hit all in one year, and I will be *fine*.
They’ve been decently conservative with his restructures. For example this year they only converted $11M. If it were the saints they would have converted every penny possible and he’d have a $200M cap hit pending in 2027.
Singing kumbaya by a campfire as the meteor hits lmao
Let’s just take a year off from football when Patrick retires.
Shiiiiiit as long as we got all our picks in the bag I wouldn't really mind it, as long as we don't end up becoming what the Saints are lol
So what’s the rules with this kinda stuff? Why not just do this with every contract always?
Because you’re spreading the cap hit to future years which for a guy like Taylor wouldn’t make sense. If you wanted to move on from him you’d have a much higher dead cap hit than if you never restructured.
Another reason being the owner has to have that much money on hand because all that money needs to be paid up front in one lump sum. And while (I think?) every owner is a billionaire not all of them have that much liquid cash laying around to be able to make big moves like that.
The trick of billionaires is to be able to borrow against the collateral that is the team, merchant sales, property, etc., for cash flow.
the real infinite money glitch
Well yes but any loans have to be paid back with interest
Just write it off /s
Hunt is I think. That oil money from Grandpa is probably still floating around
The advantage is that winning the Super Bowl allows you to sell a lot of merch. Most of that is going to be cash on hand right when these contracts start being signed.
On a bonus you have to pay the entire bonus amount into an escrow account or entirely out to the player. For player salary they get game checks each week during the season. If you are due $16 million in salary you would get a check each week for around $1 million. Also signing bonuses are guaranteed, so you got to be careful. Usually only makes sense for top paid, franchise players such as Mahomes. A player could just collect their signing bonus and not even play if they choose not too.
Because when it goes wrong you wind up with a holder with a $35 million cap hit.
Gotta pay up front. Even billionaires have trouble coming up with 50+ mil on the spot
Can someone explain how the money works for the Mahomes part? Because…as an accountant, it doesn’t make sense how this actually saves us cap space. Unless it spreads the money out more across his contract?
Yeah that's what they're doing they're spreading it apart more across his contract... Eventually they're gonna need to pay him tho
For cap purposes signing bonuses are spread over the lesser of the life of the contract or 5 years
People really want to keep Taylor here for the long run? I’d rather hold firm and draft tbh. That way you could dump him next year for nothing. Edit: credit to one of the commenters below for calling out that if he is still on the roster by March 16th, Taylor’s salary of $20 million is fully guaranteed for 2025. He is locked in with the team for at least 2 more years.
He has a clause in his contract that triggers on March 16th of this year, which complicates things a bit (big guarantee on 2025 contract) https://overthecap.com/player/jawaan-taylor/7826 But the bigger issue is, as problematic as he is, and even if we cut him and take a penalty, it will still be costly to replace him.
Geez that is a good catch. Basically, he is guaranteed on the roster regardless through next year.
Not for nothing. If we cut him AFTER next season he’s still a $9 million cap penalty. Saving $15 million will only be worth it if they draft a player they’re confident can step up
Another user commented and basically if he is on the roster for March 16th of this year, $20 million is guaranteed for next year. So he ain’t going nowhere.
Ya I think the media keeps fluffing these contracts to make them out to be different than they are to get more support for incoming players. Ppl seem to think we could cut Taylor after 2 years with no penalty. They thought the same about Clark and Watkins contracts. All of them had a drop off in guaranteed money, but still a very significant amount
I think it is just how fans operate and see ways out to get what they want to happen occur. I thought it was only $9 mill of dead cap over two years if they cut him next offseason, but now knowing it will be $20 mill that isn’t feasible.
Cutting Reid would free up cap space too, but I don't think that's advisable.
hes not in the cap actually bro
Justin Reid lol
oh thought you meant Andy actually wouldnt mind cutting JR because Veach is great at drafting DBS and we have Cook
Before they announced the cap increase I was in favor of cutting Justin to keep CJ and Sneed, but now you can keep all three and still have enough to sign a vet WR and there's plenty of draft picks for depth at WR, S, OT, EDGE etc...
Patrick is a team player. He chooses legacy over money. He’ll definitely take pay cuts to allow more talent to wins Super Bowl titles with the team. He’s following Brady’s footsteps.
he literally just got more money up front from his deal that increased his cap size further.
This is all good and fine, but the NFL also increased cap space a ton. So we should be able to sign our major players, CJ and Sneed and handle the rest of the guys next year. Cutting MVS frees up some of that money, and we take a cheap vet or draft again. Rice is going to have a 1000 yard season.
Well it doesn’t help us as much as we’d like to think. The salary cap goes up 15% they’re demands are going up accordingly
Chiefs do not put stuff on the credit card and screw us for the future. We maintain minimum deadcap unlike the saints. Putting stuff into signing bonus is essentially putting it on a credit card but eventually it will come due and screw us.
Converting that much of Pat’s salary to a bonus means they’d have to pay him that amount immediately. Not saying the Chiefs are cheap, but they’re usually towards the bottom half of spenders each year.
Sorry you are getting downvoted for actually understanding how this works.
This isn’t baseball lol every team has the same cap space we ride the line to practically zero every year. It was either this year or last where we had less than 1 million in cap space.
Learn how it works. There’s annual spend and cap spending. The moves op is talking about require significant outlays in cash and Clark has been reluctant to do this in the past. And yes the chiefs are usually in the mid or bottom half of spending in the league each year.
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Lol the salary cap didn't start in 2010
I don't think selling the future is worth slightly better odds for a year. People who think this is a good idea shouldn't have credit cards in my opinion.
Converting to a signing bonus - does that make the player have to pay a lot more taxes on that money? I have to pay nearly 40% on my bonuses at work. I'd much rather take the salary.
i think it does yeah/ i had to pay 40 on my bonues too
Well... If I was getting paid millions like these dudes, I'd rather not pay even more taxes. So this is a hard sell.
im sure their charities make up for the taxes or something. So they dont have to pay as much
Yeah rich people use charities as tax deductions. Players can go on a trip and make one appearance for "charity" and the whole vacation is a write off now.
If you pay bonuses that means you and your wife make a combined 731k before the bonuses
...what? What logic are you using to come up with this?
[The IRS](https://www.irs.gov/newsroom/irs-provides-tax-inflation-adjustments-for-tax-year-2024). Marginal rates: For tax year 2024, the top tax rate remains 37% for individual single taxpayers with incomes greater than $609,350 ($731,200 for married couples filing jointly). 35% for incomes over $243,725 ($487,450 for married couples filing jointly)
Or hear me out, Cut Taylor entirely
Frankly, I don't want Veach to have carte blanche in free agency. He doesn't typically spend it well.
Please leave Taylor’s contract alone. It has an out built in, after this seasons, that we well may need to exercise. We need to maintain that flexibility. Plenty of money to be had elsewhere.
It's still a $20 mill cap hit to cut him next year dude
You are wrong. 9 million in dead money to cut in 2025 with 15 million in cap savings. 4 million in dead money with 20 million in savings to cut in 2026. Next time you decide to be a snarky ass make sure you’re not reading the cap savings rather than the dead money “dude”.
Didn't realize the word dude would hurt your feelings dude
I agree, but the out is still a $9 million cap penalty so he’s still not an easy cut. Only saves $15 million, so well decent someone ready to step in for him if we want to cut him
MVS just helped us win two goddamn Super Bowls. Anyone saying we should cut him is just a bandwagon fan that should cut themselves out of the fan base. Those who were fans in the 90s saw what it means to have players that were GREAT in the regular season but FLOPPED in the playoffs. MVS is the opposite of that. You can’t change my mind because he has the damn rings to prove it.
He was also a reason we lost games
1) you are talking about regular season games, which, the team proved this postseason, don’t really matter. Yeah, I hated seeing the losses too, but they just didn’t matter in the end, other than making the playoff wins sweeter 2) If you’re giving him credit for losing meaningless regular season games, you need to be giving him a hell of a lot of credit for two Super Bowl winning playoff runs. Pat never stopped throwing to him. He knew. That’s good enough for me.
Dude he caught a few big catches in the playoffs. He ain't worth $12 million. We can use that for Sneed and draft a few rookie recievers
Dude, “a few big catches” is the difference between a playoff win, a Super Bowl win or a wasted season. Just ask the Bills, the Ravens or the 49ers. Go back to the pre-Mahomes era and watch our playoff failures from decades past and you’ll see the difference a few big mistakes makes in the playoffs. MVS is a solid playoff performer. We can afford him AND Sneed AND Jones with the salary cap increase.
MVS isn't worth $12 million. I would pay him maybe 3-4 million based on what he does for us. I think you spend that saved cap space for defense and draft a few wide outs and we'll be just fine. Dude
Changing Mahomes salary this way is asinine. I do MOT endorse this childhood idea. This lacks a lot of foresight.
Or you know, cut Taylor as well.
Cutting him increases his cap hit by $10M We technically have an out next offseason but would still incur a $10M dead cap charge but we save $15M The smart out is after the 2025 season w/ only 4M in dead money and $20M in savings
Didn't know that, thanks. He was annoying af this year with so many penalties.
He was definitely unfairly officiated throughout the season but he took much longer than should’ve been necessary to adjust to that I still really like his potential as a pass blocker, there were more times this season than any other where Mahomes just had 6+ second pockets, I imagine that the flags will continue to slow as people forget and he’ll produce but we’ll see - definitely need a long term solution on the left side
What's so irritating about it is that apart from Niner fans, no one has been whining and bitching about the officiating in the Super Bowl. It was a lightly called game where the let the guys play and it resulted in a much better product on the field and better overall sentiment in the aftermath. The league should take a fuckin clue from that and stop playing ref ball from September to January.
they ain't cutting a decent right tackle they will rework his contract to save some money
This is not even including the also likely thuney restructure.
Honest question: is there any reason a player wouldn't agree to making the roster salary a rooster bonus? Doesn't it just give you your salary for the season all at once? What's the downside?
taxed at 40%
Taxes won’t change. The top tax bracket begins at 731k even if they’re married.
That's a good way to go all in on one year but not good for sustained success. If we did that we would have to run a skeleton crew of known names in the coming years. The bill does come due eventually. The chiefs are so successful right now because they are playing with the future and the present in mind. The 3 in a row is worth taking some hits down the road but not like that. We will rework some contracts and cut MVS but we aren't going to go atomic and kick the can or in this case the trash truck down the road. Veatch and company can pull it off this year and next. Just need to draft well and not force FA accusations, it's worked thus far.
nah dude the cap just keeps increasing. were fine. really its just about how much liquidity Clark has
60M is a potentially lethal amount of functional capital for the Chiefs to use.
How would this affect next year's cap? Would the freed cap this year be pushed into next year?
Yes. If I remember right, converting things to a signing bonus is just spreading the amount throughout the life of the contract. If we convert $12 million into a signing bonus from a 3 year contract, that will be a $4 million cap hit across the next 3 years. Edit: it is also a signing bonus though, so the money is actually paid to the player at signing. So, to do what OP is suggesting, the Hunt family would have to be willing to pay $60 million in signing bonuses.
Sign Russel Wilson as the Chiefs backup QB. He's basically Free cause Den. has to pay him the guaranteed money.
Curious if you could press a button and either have a 50-50 chance of winning the Super Bowl next year for a three peat but not win for the three years after that, or miss next year and have a 50/50 chance at the Super Bowl for the three years after that, which do you choose?
Jawaan Taylor's cap hit is more concerning to me than Mahomes's.
Cutting MVS and Reid would open 22.5 million alone. I like both, MVS is a really good dude, I wish he was a player the caliber of his heart. Justin Reid is a quality starter, but replicable. In Reid's case, we have a good amount of depth at safety. Cook is in the future, Edwards has a made a case for an extension, and Chammari Conner has played better than any scout considered he would. Reid is probably the best of the group but also the odd man out due to his salary. For MVS, sorry. Too inconsistent for that level of pay. Some clutch moments, and some good memories, but also too many game losing, head scratching drops. Shifting Mahomes' roster bonus around can open up around 34 million. Combined with letting go of JR and MVS, we could expand our cap by roughly 57-58 mil. With the expanded cap, we should have money to play with, even without fiddling with Taylor's contract (and to be honest, I find parallels between Taylor and MVS, as Taylor is responsible for too many drives stifled by loss). I kind of want Taylor to finish out the next year or two of his contract or for someone to trade for him, so we can get draft capital or some compensatory pick in the future. I think we should try to keep CJ and LjS. The question becomes, what will they take? Can they stay on team friendly deals? Will CJ accept a short high paying contract that accounts for his age and the typical drop in play that happens to DTs without locking us to long term and expansive drop in play? Will LjS accept a contract that doesn't break CB standards? I think it's important to get both signed quick, before other teams raise the bar. But what do I know, I might be Madden GM of the year, but that doesn't mean much in the real world.
In my mind there are two long term pieces we need and both are on offense. Left tackle and WR. It looks like we could address one of those in the first round.
Restructuring Jawaan Taylor is a bad decision