So the question that every Chiefs' fan is dying to hear right now is, how much money do the Chiefs have to spend this offseason?Pete Yasinskas of the Charlotte Observer has gotten a head start on the guessing game. He projects the Chiefs to be at about $7 million above the cap, which would rank them 27th in the league.
This is where Chiefs' fans immediately reach for the panic button. Relax. These numbers mean pretty much nothing. There is really no way to project how much money the Chiefs or any team will have available to spend until the free agency officially launches.There are way too many dynamics that work into the salary cap equation. As a perfect example, Trent Green is set to make over $7 million in 2007. The Chiefs would be insane not to restructure that contract. You also have to wonder if Willie Roaf is on or off the books in this calculation.
Though, I'll admit, Chiefs' fans, from the information that I see, the situation does not look good. Adam Teicher briefly outlines the Chiefs' cap situation in a recent articlhe wrote for the Kansas City Star. The problem is that the Chiefs have so much money locked into players that really don't need to be Chiefs next season: Greg Wesley, Sammy Knight, and Kendrell Bell are the most obvious names that come to mind. Last season, Bell quietly had his optional roster bonus money converted into signing bonus money: a nice little deferral of cap ramifications, but those hits are realized at some point.
Which makes you wonder if the Chiefs should just bite the bullet and cut their dead weight like Wesley, Knight, Bell etc... now and prepare themselves to spend a boatload of money next season. The Chiefs have for so long been good enough, but perhaps it's time that they suck it up one year for the sake of rebuilding?
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
1-26-2007 @ 11:58AM
albaNY Hawker said...
Love the headline.
We'll be happy to take Tony Gonzolez off your hands if you're looking to free up some cap room!
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1-26-2007 @ 12:03PM
Dave's Football Blog said...
Hey, one guy traded a red paper clip up to get a house. Maybe the Chiefs can use that paper clip to get better linemen...
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1-26-2007 @ 11:47PM
Jim said...
We are about to hit the “Let’s cut ” season in Chiefsland and it’s going to get old fast. The first player’s name that is going to roll off most fans lips is Trent Green. “Yeah, let’s cut Trent Green yesterday!”
Not so fast, my friends. If the Chiefs cut Trent, his guaranteed money get’s applied against the salary cap (this year projected at $108mm, next year projected at $116mm) depending on when the Chiefs make the incision. The main thing preventing a team from cutting dead weight is how much money we'd lose in dead cap space. If you cut a player prior to June 1st, you owe all their guaranteed money in that year's salary cap space. For example, if we owe Trent $5mm in bonuses, we'd take a $5mm dead space hit the year we cut him (if prior to June 1st). If we cut after June 1st we take one year of prorated signing bonus the year we cut Trent, and the remainder the following year - Thus, $1mm that year and $4mm the following year. As you can see, this is where the decisions get tough.
The NFLPA frowns on players taking pay cuts, so another thought is that we "restructure" contracts to turn unguaranteed salary into guaranteed salary which can then be prorated over the course of a contract. Only guaranteed money is prorated so we would be turning unguaranteed salary (which might never get paid) into guaranteed salary that will be paid no matter what. One way or the other, for every $ the Chiefs switch from salary to bonus exactly that $ amount will have to be paid in salary cap space. It might not be paid this year, but one year that $ will get paid. So this is where King Carl is going to have to make error free personnel decisions.
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1-26-2007 @ 11:47PM
Jake said...
When the '06 season started, the Chiefs were among the top 5 teams in the league in terms of having the most cap room. The cap projections are just that, projections of what a team's salary will be, without any basis in reality.
For example, Arizona is one of the top teams in terms of cap room, but they also have a whole lot of free agents to re-sign this offseason. So at the end of the day, do they really have that much cap room? Well, if they don't re-sign any of their FAs, they'll have all that room. But in reality, no, they don't.
KC's situation is more complicated, not only with Willie Roaf and some other possible retirements, but with Tony Gonzalez. Although he would have been able to test the free agent waters this offseason, Tony was not in the last year of his contract. He was able to void the final year because he reached certain incentives. The chances of that being factored into the cap projections are slim to none, meaning the $7 million they list for KC likely includes the bloated final year of Tony's old contract.
Carl Peterson said in the Star several weeks ago that he intended to franchise Tony if it came to that, which could have cost around $11 million towards the 2007 cap. That's already well over the $7 million KC is projected at, and there's really no chance of Carl spending that much on an aging TE if it was going to prevent him from re-signing other FAs this year (Jared Allen, Damon Huard, Kawika Mitchell) and working on a new deal with LJ.
KC is in much better shape than the projections would suggest, and this doesn't even take into account the obvious contract reworkings that will be done.
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1-29-2007 @ 1:03AM
E Beard said...
Dont forget the box of cheez-its they got from Denver for Ryan Sims or was it two?
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1-29-2007 @ 1:03AM
rd555 said...
Hey, nice work you guys. You guys appear to really know your stuff concerning cap issues, how it works, what may lie ahead, etc.
You're information is very interesting and informative. I've definitely learned something. Thanks...
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