Kansas City Chiefs making right decision moving on from Cam Erving
The Kansas City Chiefs have opted not to exercise their 2020 option on offensive lineman Cameron Erving and this is absolutely the right move.
Having a franchise quarterback is great, but that makes it even more pivotal that the Kansas City Chiefs provide an offensive line capable of giving Patrick Mahomes the protection he needs. They made a good start by not picking up Cameron Erving‘s option for the 2020 season.
I don’t blame the Chiefs one bit for giving Erving a shot, as he had flamed out in Cleveland after the Browns took him in the first round in 2015. Kansas City acquired him via trade with the Browns in 2017 and he didn’t do a ton in his first year as a Chief.
He looked decent in limited action in 2018 as a swing lineman who would come in whenever someone went down with an injury. This past season, however, he was not up to the task of protecting Mahomes and that was very apparent after Eric Fisher was injured and Erving had to fill in at left tackle. That did not go well, to say the least.
The Chiefs are not expected to exercise their 2020 option on T/G Cam Erving, a source tells me.
— RIP Terez A. Paylor (@TerezPaylor) February 29, 2020
Erving, 27, appeared in 13 games and started eight for the Super Bowl champs this season. He’s also started 25 games for K.C. the last three years.
Bringing in Erving was one of Brett Veach’s first moves as the Chiefs general manager and it wasn’t all for naught. Erving finished his Chiefs career with 40 games played (25 starts) and he spent time at left tackle, left guard, and right guard during that time.
Teams will most definitely be interested in Erving due to his versatility along the line, but he’s not a viable starting option. The Chiefs needed to make this move in order to save money to potentially sign Mahomes to a long-term deal (assuming that happens this offseason) and to try and make Chris Jones happy as well.
The Chiefs offensive line might have a whole new look in 2020, as Erving is the first to go and could soon be joined by Laurent Duvernay-Tardif, Austin Reuter, and Andrew Wylie. The Chiefs could save $13 million by parting ways with those four players, but they’d have to make signing Stefen Wisniewski a priority and also make it a point to draft an offensive lineman early on in the 2020 NFL Draft.
The Kansas City Chiefs will have a lot of tough decisions to make this offseason and so far we’ve seen them franchise Jones and now they’re reportedly going to move on from Erving, which is the right move. Hopefully Erving can hook on with another team and do well, but it’s apparent that he is not a viable starting option in the NFL.