The Chiefs faced a difficult offseason following the 2013 playoff meltdown. After GM John Dorsey's spending spree in the 2013 offseason, the Chiefs had a half dozen premier free agents getting ready to hit the market, no cap room to sign any of them (or any incoming free agents of any renown), and no second round pick due to the Alex Smith deal. How do you make a team betterwhen you're set to lose so much talent and have so little resources to replace them?
Now, I'm not an NFL General Manager, and y'all better be glad I don't run the Chiefs, because I must have ran three dozen simulations of that offseason for the Chiefs before it arrived, and every one of them had the Chiefs doing their damnedest to stay afloat replacing our departing players with free agents from the Salvation Army and midround draft picks. The intense spending spree of 2013 now looked like it had hopelessly hamstrung the Chiefs, who at this point would just have to hope to stay afloat until cap space opened up in future years.
John Dorsey, however, is an NFL General Manager. And armed with few draft picks and a shoestring budget, he totally dismantled my expectations of what can be accomplished by a Chiefs team that knows exactly what it's doing.
Let's start with the free agent departures, because this part is astonishing. The Chiefs limited budget meant that they would ultimately have to wave bye-bye to left tackle Brandon Albert, starting guards Jon Asamoah and Geoff Schwartz, playmaker Dexter McCluster, run stopping extraordinaire Tyson Jackson, starting linebacker Akeem Jordan, starting free safety Kendrick Lewis, dynamic kick returner and dime safety Quentin Demps, and would eventually cut Pro Bowl corner Brandon Flowers. Whatever you think of some of the players individually, that is objectively a lot of talent to replace. Once these players left Kansas City, they all went to sign contracts with new teams for
a combined $100 million. ($140 million if you count Flowers' new deal this past offseason.)
That's right. John Dorsey allowed $100 million in talent to walk out the door, with roughly a tenth of that in cap space with which to replace said players. It was impossible to imagine a world where the Chiefs emerged from this offseason stronger than they were entering it, missing this much talent.
So armed virtually no money, Dorsey's free agent signings were meager, but solid, it's crazy to see how much he built the team for 2014 (and 2015!) with so little:
- Franchise QB Alex Smith was boxed in to a four year extension at a "middle class" pay rate for QBs.
- Stud safety Husain Abdullah was re-signed.
- Valuable reserve safeties Kurt Coleman and Daniel Sorensen were brought in, and Kelcie McCray was traded for by throwing impending-bust guard Rishaw Johnson at the Buccaneers.
- Underrated starting linebacker Josh Mauga was ushered in by DC Bob Sutton.
- Underrated interior passrusher Vance Walker was inked.
- Nickel corner Chris Owens was signed, which paid dividends until the last month of the year.
- Prototypical third down back Joe McKnight was given a chance.
- OL Jeff Linkenbach and ILB Joe Mays did very little in limited action, but were signed for pennies on the dollar.
- The one disastrous signing from this entire offseason of bargain bin shopping was guard Mike McGlynn, whom the Chiefs started at left guard for most of 2014, providing nightmares to any Chiefs fans who love to watch offensive line play.
Several of these players are still helping the Chiefs today in Abdullah, Sorensen, and Mauga.
Now, it is worth mentioning that the Chiefs' limited cap space arguably did cause them to lose out on free agent WRs Emmanuel Sanders and DeSean Jackson. But by otherwise refusing to make any ridiculously-structured, ultra-back-loaded contracts that would have saddled the Chiefs' cap in future years, the cap came mostly clean in 2015, allowing the Chiefs to pay studs OLB Justin Houston, WR Jeremy Maclin, and DE Allen Bailey bundles of cash in the coming year and still have close to $30 million in clean cap space in 2015.
However, it should be mentioned that John Dorsey was just getting started. Check out this draft class from 2014, even without a 2nd rounder due to Alex Smith:
- Promising pass rusher Dee Ford in the first round.
- Promising corner Phillip Gaines in the third round.
- Electric playmaker De'Anthony Thomas in the fourth.
- Starting linemen Zach Fulton and Laurent Duvarney-Tardif in the sixth round.
- WR Albert Wilson and RB Charcandrick West signed as undrafted free agents, which is a stupidly ridiculous haul.
All of these players are contributing to the Chiefs now, significantly so, though Gaines and Thomas are battling injury.
It's worth summarizing for emphasis:
With little cap space, $100 million in departing free agents, and no second round pick, John Dorsey made the Chiefs a better team in 2014.
Almost every team needs those splashy free agency signings to help put it over the top. But those quiet offseasons, where teams confidently stuck to the plan and didn't make any egregious errors out of impatience or impertinence, are just as important, and Dorsey aced it.
John Dorsey handled the difficult 2014 offseason unbelievably well.
(https://chiefsplanet.com/BB/showthread.php?t=296986)