Kansas City Chiefs: Pre-Free Agency 53-man Roster Prediction

Free Agency is set to begin and with that, it seems like the perfect time for the first roster prediction of the offseason for the Kansas City Chiefs. 

Before we get into it, let’s recap what has happened so far. First off, most Kansas City Chiefs fans saw it coming, but it was still somehow shocking when the Chiefs released franchise greats, Eric Fisher and Mitchell Schwartz. That was the Chiefs’ first two big moves and since then, the Chiefs have restructured Patrick Mahomes, Chris Jones, and Travis Kelce’s contracts.

For those unaware of what restructuring means, to put it in the most simple of terms, it basically just takes this year’s cap hit for the player and turns it into a signing bonus for a player, which is then spread out evenly amongst the years remaining on the player’s deal. The player still gets all the money due to them, it just re-disperses the cap hit basically and will make the current season’s cap hit as low as their veteran minimum.

Those were the three most obvious moves for the Chiefs to create some cap space and, in this roster prediction, there will be two other cap-saving deals for the Chiefs. This will be extending Tyrann Mathieu and Tyreek Hill. These extensions would put Mathieu just above Budda Baker as the league’s highest-paid safety and give Hill a raise as well bumping him up into the top five wide receiver salaries where he belongs.

Now you might be thinking “More money?! We need to be trimming cap not shelling out more money.” So again to put it simply, Brett Veach and his cap wizardry would again use these extensions similar to a restructure which would create quite a bit more cap for the Chiefs.

Now, your next question might be, “But doesn’t this put the team in cap issues down the road?” In theory, it could, but here are two reasons why it won’t.

First of all, the team is really only worried about pushing money down the road if it’s a player they are 100 percent sold on being part of their long-term plans (hence why they left Frank Clark’s deal alone). All the players restructured or extended above are going to be around for the long haul so pushing their cap hits down the road is not a big deal.

Secondly, the new TV deal is set to make the cap explode once it is announced and the Chiefs can get back to pre-COVID playing conditions so they will have tremendously more cap to work with down the road.

Now getting back to the roster prediction, these moves plus some other smaller cuts of players not likely to make the final 53 would put the Chiefs cap space well over $40 million. Yes, you read that right. That isn’t all for the spending on the free-agent market, there are still some in-house free agents that KC will want to keep.

In this roster prediction, Veach is able to bring back Byron Pringle, Darrel Williams, Taco Charlton, Keleche Osemele, and Damien Wilson all on veteran minimum salaries. The first three on two-year deals with a slight raise in year two with Osemele and Wilson on one-year deals.

The Chiefs also will sign Charvarius Ward to an original round tender which comes in just over $2 million, Bashaud Breeland to the same one year deal as last year ($3 million) so he can be a free agent again next year when he can cash in on a higher cap, Daniel Sorensen to a team-friendly two year deal with a cap hit of $1.5 million this season and doubles next year on a team option, and gave Mike Remmers about a $500,000 raise and brought him back on a one year $1.5 million dollar deal.

All of the moves listed above send the Chiefs into free agency with $35.9 million in cap space. Now it is time for the fun stuff.