Kansas City Chiefs: Realistic look at 2019 Chiefs roster – Version 2
By Shade Piper
One Big Free Agent?
If you hadn’t already guessed after just seeing the photo, yes, it’s Landon Collins. The Chiefs have been linked to Collins since back before the trade deadline and now that the franchise tag deadline has passed and he is officially on the open market, it is now becoming a much more real possibility.
The potential of Collins reuniting with Steve Spagnuolo to help replete the struggling Chiefs secondary, has many Chiefs fans’ mouths watering. According to Matt Lombardo, the Chiefs could make Collins “a priority” this offseason.
There will be a strong market for Landon Collins, now that #Giants opt not to tag or sign him to a new deal. My sense from talking with league sources last week is #Chiefs will make him a priority. Here are some potential landing spots: https://t.co/q2qwd8p8uw
— Matt Lombardo 🏈 (@MattLombardoNFL) March 5, 2019
This is understandable considering the Chiefs’ secondary problems and Collins being ranked as the second best safety in the league this year in the AP’s positional rankings. It’s not every season you have a top two player at a position hit the open market.
He is a great run stopper, good in pass coverages, and is only 25 years old. Collins has a lot of good football ahead of him and is not historically injury plagued; only missing five games in his four-year career.
This would be a great pick up for the Chiefs, but can they afford him? I was really nervous about how much he would cost originally, but then realized how saturated the safety market is this offseason.
https://twitter.com/SportsCenter/status/1103388459681697792
Add Tyrann Mathieu, Adrian Amos, Lamarcus Joyner, Tre Boston, and more to this list and you can see that this is a very deep free agent class at the safety position. This saturated free agent market could really drive down the price of the safety position as a whole. It is also, worth noting that the Giants have already turned down the chance to franchise tag Landon Collins at just over $11 million.
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It really is hard to gauge a player’s value on the open market, but don’t be surprised at all if Collins signed for less than the franchise tag amount this summer. Brad Gagnon had a really good article recently on the value of the safety position and how it appears to trending downwards.
Realistically, he could sign a contract that pays anywhere between $9 and $14 million in average yearly salary amount. In my roster, I am going to have the Chiefs signing him to a contract that pays him an average $10 million per season with signing bonuses.
This seems low, but with the apparent downward trend of the price for a safety, signing him to an Eric Berry or Harrison Smith level contract isn’t a good idea. A $10 million dollar cap hit this season would leave the Chiefs with $17.8 million in cap space, but only 42 players on the roster, so the moves don’t stop here.