The Kansas City Chiefs have quite a bit of salary cap space available, but they’ve yet to figure out how they want to spend it.
According to the NFLPA’s public salary cap report, the Chiefs currently have $21.6 million in salary cap space available and are listed with 64 players under contract. There are a few players that don’t seem to be in their system yet, such as recently re-signed players Mike Remmers, Taco Charlton, Nick Keizer and Daniel Sorensen. So this number is probably actually somewhere under $20 million right now, but it’s still plenty when it comes to adding more impact players.
Kansas City restructured a number of contracts, including Patrick Mahomes, Travis Kelce and Chris Jones in order to free up cap space and be competitive in free agency. The problem is that they just haven’t been able to close with several of their free agent targets and they’re running out of options that can truly help this team improve.
The team reportedly came very close to signing left tackle Trent Williams, but it’s now clear that he used the Chiefs for leverage all along. They’ve been actively searching for help at the receiver position, but missed out on several key free agents they’d been talking with such as JuJu Smith-Schuster and Josh Reynolds. They’ve recently brought a pair of players in for visits with K’Waun Williams and Melvin Ingram, but with recent injuries to both there is no guarantee that either player ends up in Kansas City. With big needs at left tackle, the team has reportedly had some exploratory talks, checking in with veteran left tackle Russell Okung.
So far, the Chiefs have only been able to land one big fish, signing former New England Patriots guard Joe Thuney to a five-year deal. They also snagged a great low-risk, high-reward option in Kyle Long and brought back Blake Bell after he spent a year in Dallas. Outside of those three moves everything the Brett Veach has done has been about retaining minor role players.
This free agency period has been uneventful and a bit disappointing for fans, but Veach seems to be taking the cautious approach to free agency. Maybe it’ll pay off and a player becomes available later in the process that the team has the money to sign. Perhaps they’ll use the cap space to acquire a player in trade during or around the draft. They could also end up rolling over a significant portion of the money freed to the 2022 NFL season. There’s still a lot of different ways that this can free agency period can play out and be deemed a success, despite the early frustrations.
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