Albert situation major test for new Chiefs regime
By SAM MELLINGER
The Kansas City Star
Branden Albert is standing tall, a 6-foot-5 and 316-pound giant, the most confident and sure face he can muster telling you that whatever problems he might have had with the Chiefs are in the past. He very much wants you to believe this. He very much wants to believe it himself.
That would make things so much easier, you know.
It’s just not reality. Not yet, anyway.
This is an inherently combustible situation — a good player who wants to be paid like a great one, working on a one-year contract on the other side of the line from a younger and better player who was just the first overall draft pick. If Albert was uneasy before, now he will be playing with his obvious replacement. If nothing changes, a season like this will be one filled with land mines.
This is the first dose of drama for the Chiefs’ new leadership of general manager John Dorsey and coach Andy Reid, so it’s particularly important how Albert’s situation plays out. All parties seem to understand this, and so far the signs are mostly positive, if tenuous.
Albert is being a good soldier, welcoming a veteran’s role on the offensive line and promising to help rookie Eric Fisher where he can. Those contract troubles are old news, he says, and he wants to focus on football now.
That’s fine, but Albert’s on a one-year deal while wanting long-term security, which means he’s in a new kind of contract dispute. This one is just muzzled and pushed to the background, at least for the moment.
Albert signed his one-year franchise contract for $9.8 million at least in part to protect himself after he saw that nobody was getting rich in the 2013 free-agent market. That lessened everyone’s leverage, and Albert wasn’t alone in signing a franchise deal early. In years past, players often waited into and even through training camp to sign one-year offers.
He spent part of the offseason complaining to anyone who would listen, especially those who followed him on Twitter. It was a bad look, immature for a 28-year-old man seeking long-term security. But ever since the day this spring when he shut down his Twitter account, Albert has mostly done the right things. The Chiefs and Dolphins appeared on the verge of a trade that would’ve included a lucrative long-term contract for Albert, but when that fell through, there was no public complaining.
Instead, Albert showed up for practice this week in relatively good shape and made a point of talking with Fisher, who is playing right tackle at least in part because of Albert’s refusal to change positions. Albert admitted his mistakes and wisely refused to talk much about his contract.
Albert has every right and motivation to secure his future. Nobody should begrudge him that. But his old approach was doing himself harm. This new way is better for both player and team.
If this is how the situation remains, neither side will have everything it wanted. Albert will play left tackle but lack a long-term commitment. The Chiefs will retain a good player but pay him more than he’s proven to be worth.
At the very least, both sides seem to understand that the only way to come through this predicament unharmed is by not only communicating, but keeping that communication private.
What we’ve seen so far is that Albert can swallow some of his pride and avoid being the guy who’s unhappy making nearly $10 million. For a player still looking for a long-term deal, that’s important.
For their part, the “new” Chiefs are showing that they will pay full sticker price to retain their best in-house talent. They did this with wide receiver Dwayne Bowe and punter Dustin Colquitt, too. If the price includes a premium, Dorsey and Reid will consider it the cost of doing business ... and a message to the rest of their players that their biggest payday doesn’t need to be somewhere else.
It’s telling that the new Chiefs chose to pay Albert more than he’s worth in the short term rather than trade him for less than he’s worth in the long term. This is a franchise that is very clearly making football decisions based on football factors, which is a nice change.
Albert’s situation is the most obvious place where Dorsey and Reid must manage how money and ego play into such decisions. This is a major test that will continue to show us how they’ll run the Chiefs.
Like so much else about this team, it is for now encouraging but forever tenuous.