The Kansas City Chiefs will open the 2020 NFL season tight against the salary cap.
In September of 2019, the Chiefs had around $19.1 million in salary-cap space available for in-season free-agent additions, trades at the deadline or to roll over into the 2020 season. That number increased a bit after they made a pair of procedural contract moves. By October of 2019, Kansas City had around $23.1 million in cap space. That’s considerably more than they’ll have to start the year in 2020.
According to Sports Illustrated’s Albert Breer, the NFL’s most recent salary cap report has the Chiefs in the bottom 10 in the league in terms of salary cap space. Kansas City currently has just $7.04 million in cap space to start the season. This reporting includes the recently assembled 53-man roster and 16-man practice squad.
As of this AM, the Rams were actually over the cap. Per the NFL report, the teams closest to the cap …
1) Rams -$404K
2) Saints $1.50M
3) Vikings $1.65M
4) Falcons $1.93M
5) Steelers $6.01M
6) Seahawks $6.19M
7) Cardinals $6.51M
8) Bucs $6.79M
9) Chiefs $7.04M
10) Bills $7.58M— Albert Breer (@AlbertBreer) September 7, 2020
Kansas City is definitely in better shape than some other NFL teams like the Falcons, Vikings, Saints and Rams. Recall the time where the Chiefs had $177 dollars in cap space this offseason and somehow managed to fit contract extensions for Patrick Mahomes, Chris Jones and Travis Kelce under the cap.
Things could be considerably worse and they’d still probably be alright. The team has a pair of creative salary cap gurus in Brandt Tilis and Chris Shea who collaborate with Brett Veach on this stuff. This amount should be more than enough money for a few key additions during the season as the team made last year with DT Mike Pennel and LG Stefen Wisniewski.
If the front office had plans to roll over a big chunk of salary cap space into a 2021 season, with a $175 million dollar salary cap floor due to COVID-19, they might need to rethink that strategy. Ultimately, the salary cap is malleable and Chiefs Kingdom shouldn’t lose any sleep over this number for the time being.
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