The Kansas City Chiefs will be forced to make some tough choices to make down the line when it comes to the 2021 salary cap.
Jason Fitzgerald of Over The Cap recently posted his earliest salary cap projections for 2021 along with a composite score that rates the salary cap health of every NFL team. His composite takes into account estimated cap space, the max cap space that can be reached with cuts, the max cap space that can be reached with restructures, and finally a basic ranking system for unrestricted free agents. The average of those four factors provided Fitzgerald with a ranking system in terms of salary cap health. The outcome wasn’t great for Kansas City.
Keep in mind, we don’t yet have the exact calculations for the 2020 rookie class, who haven’t yet signed contracts. The Chiefs can still extend players like Patrick Mahomes and Chris Jones this year which would change these projections.
Here is a look at where everything ranks for Kansas City:
| Estimated Cap | Max w/ Cuts | Max w/ Restructures | FA Score | Average ranking |
| $27,781,429 | $82,176,677 | $47,785,856 | 38.7 | 26.5 |
Without any fiddling with the cap, Fitzgerald suspects the Chiefs will have just under $28 million in cap space for the 2021 season. This number includes the fifth-year option for Mahomes, which is projected at around $24 million.
You’ll notice that the Chiefs are able to free up a significant amount of cap space with cuts and restructures. You can guarantee that both of those things will happen in some capacity. Just looking over the numbers, guys like Eric Fisher and Alex Okafor could end up as cap casualties. Travis Kelce and Tyrann Mathieu could be due for extensions to spread out their cap hits. Anthony Hitchens will almost certainly be asked to restructure his contract.
The Chiefs’ free-agent score is near the highest in the league because the players hitting free agency all played a lot of snaps for the team. Chris Jones, Sammy Watkins, Daniel Sorensen, Austin Reiter, and Laurent Duvernay-Tardif are all free agents. Jones and Watkins will likely be the hardest to replace.
Ultimately, Over The Cap’s average ranks K.C. with the second-worst salary cap health in the NFL for 2021 with the New Orleans Saints as the worst. Fitzgerald considers the Chiefs a “Tier 4” team in his rankings, but it seems like things can be easily rectified for Kansas City. They’ll have to make some tough cuts, part with some big named free agents and make progress in the draft and undrafted free agency. They likely won’t be active players in the free-agent market aside from some one-year deals like we saw in 2020.
The common theme with most of the teams ranked near the bottom is that they have quarterbacks and pass rushers that they’re paying a lot of money. If you want the best team with the best players, they’ll get paid the best. The key is reloading on cheap talent to offset the losses that you’ll inevitably be forced into.
You can find out more about Fitzgerald’s criteria and calculations here.