Listen, we’re good sports fans here in the City of Brotherly Love, despite what the national media says about batteries and some skinny guy in a bad Santa outfit getting pelted at Franklin Field before I was born. So I don’t want to be accused of being a “sore winner” or whatever other nomenclature you could try to assign, but since Kev is probably still fightin’ off that magnum of vino he polished off on our hopefully soon-to-be-posted Post Super Bowl podcast, I need to get something up on this Tuesday morning or else what kind of blog is this?!?
So, we all watched in glee as that Kermit the Frog sounding @#$% got dismantled along with the rest of KC and I’m here to pile on a bit, in the sense that this may have been the Chiefs’ last bite at the apple.
A Hard Truth for Chiefs Fans
“What?! You’re so ridiculous JJ, that’s not true, he’s only 29 and yeah it was bad, but they’ll still be a good team in the next few years!”
No. You’re wrong, I am right (as usual), and here’s the math lesson to show you why.
The Kansas City Chiefs struggled on the offensive line and had issues with skill position players as well. And we’re going to “generously” call their defense slightly above average. Here’s why they might be up the creek without a paddle: they need to reshape these roster deficiencies but are going to have a really hard time because of, you guessed it, Mahomes himself.
The Mahomes Contract Problem
Mahomes’ salary cap hit this season was $37 million.
Next season it jumps to $66.26 million (also known as 24.09% of Kansas City’s Salary Cap).
And before the people who do not have enough of an understanding of how the NFL Salary Cap works get in here with the almost-obligatory, “They’ll just restructure or re-do the deal, blah, blah, blah (seriously people who don’t understand the constraints are hard to listen to…”
The Only Way Out?
Let me say that the dead cap hit on this deal is currently $77 million. It will get lower after NEXT season ($29 million and change), but in order to restructure the deal to allow for the Chiefs to properly reload with the necessary talent to compete, the Mahomie is going to have to willingly restructure his deal to go from 24.09% of the salary cap back down to around the $37 million he made this year. There’s only one way to accomplish that task without the Player’s Association having a shit fit about him willingly and knowingly returning money: They’d need to kick the can down the road by adding terms to his deal and further locking them into Mahomes without a way out. Kermit is currently signed for 7 more seasons with a potential out in 3, with 2 void years already on the deal @ $60 million per. So they’d need to extend him past his age 36 season, tack on more void years and elongate the period of the dead cap being massive from 2 or 3 to more like 5 or 6.
So, The Chiefs brass has a decision to make. Either extend their dismantled golden boy into a Mickey Loomis Saints-like contract and completely mortgage the future of a team that will be opening a new stadium within a decade, or ride out the next 3 seasons and slowly roll down the hill into mediocrity and accept that the window is closing, if not already slammed shut.
Thank God for Howie.
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