Salary Cap could exceed $220 million
 

Was $208 million this year.

https://www.nfl.com/_amp/salary-cap-...estions-remain

If we carry over our almost $5 million in cap then next year we have over $40 million in cap space before any cuts.

So basically gonna have a lotta money dawg

As will others so it helps to have an attractive spot to improve a player’s odds of getting a ring.

Mike McGlinchey and Jordan Hargrave are at the top of my wish list

Restructure Mahomes - $31 million gained
Cut Frank Clark - $19 million gained
Cut MVS - $7 million gained


Give Sneed and Juju new deals.

Why cut MVS?

MEans Veach can Tag/Trade OBJ to some run heavy team that is willing to overpay!

Because I don't see him as being worth the contract they gave him. Obviously I could be wrong and they probably won't cut him but if I'm choosing between MVS or Juju...I'm picking Juju.

How many cap spaces does it take to make a tackle?

FAX THE CURIOUS

I kinda think JJSS is taking the spot you hope Moore develops into in terms of what they ask him to do.

All reasonable ideas.

However, what I'm waiting on are the idiots posts that are coming to this thread:

Top 5 LT - should be able to get him for 4 years / $20 million
Pass Rush DE - should be 3 years / $10 million (they'll want to play for SB contender so will take discount)
Top 10 WR - 3 years / $8 million (they want to play with Pat!!!)

I see the MVS question being for if we try to keep MH vs JuJu.

I think JuJu is offered a new contract no matter what happens with the rest of the WRs.

If MH will take the same or not much more than MVS then keep him and cut MVS.

Who would be our “Mahomes chucks it deep” to guy?

Moore isn't physical in the middle of the field like Juju is. Or at least he doesn't come off that way.

Draft one.

With our need at LT/RT and d line?

Are you forgetting how many picks we have? And I didn't say draft one in the first round. Hell, if you're just looking for a deep threat...then wait until later.

Dude on track for 830 yards at 18 yard per catch?

Let OBJ walk.

I’d keep MVS for 1 more year bc I don’t want to lose both Hardman and him. Not keen on trying to replace multiple speed guys. Would much rather draft one and groom him to replace him in 2024

But yeah they need to go after someone like Ngakoue while we try to use multiple picks to trade up for a tackle. Unfortunately we just might have to

He's okay and I don't think they'll cut him. I'm just saying that if I'm picking between him and Juju....it's not MVS. I'm not adamant that he HAS to be cut.

Depending how the LT spot pans out, I wouldn't be opposed to taking a WR again fairly high. They can't keep turning over the spot year after year.

$50 million of cap space gained in 2 easy moves. That's a pretty epic combination right there!

Don't forget Justin Tucker. We can trade Butker and a case of Boulevard Wheat to Baltimore for him.

Would add either extend or trade Chris Jones. 27m hit is high.

Yes I know how many picks KC has, but I am also thinking about how many they will possibly use to move up to get a key player at either LT or DE.

Extend Jones. He is our DLine.

Do everything possible not to restructure Mahomes. Every year they are able to keep from restructuring Mahomes is like getting extra cap space in future seasons. Don't want to keep restructuring and have his salary 4 years from now be a massive hit.

Agreed on mahomes. If we don’t need to restructure we shouldn’t. I’d rather 10 years of great teams. We did such a good job on cap that we can still be aggressive without touching that contract. If we need extra money then you can load any of our signings with a big signing bonus.

Lol.

That’s not how WR development works.

Unbalizable.

Agreed. Restructuring Mahomes, especially more than a small amount, should be a last resort. If the cap exceeds $220 million and they roll over close to $4 or $5 million, cut Frank Clark, extend Chris Jones to get his cap hit down (I hope they don't wait until May or later to do this and instead get it done before free agency), and are able to either move on from Orlando Brown Jr or sign a long-term deal (so they don't have his franchise tag amount on the cap), they should have quite a bit of cap space without restructuring Mahomes much if at all. They could also restructure Joe Thuney a small amount to open up more space if they need it, as well as Kelce. They could also cut MVS if they want to extend Hardman or sign another WR aside from Juju. Every player they sign from free agency and every player they extend other than Chris Jones (or Orlando) probably won't have that much of a cap hit in 2023. Ideally, they're able to get done what they want to get done without restructuring Mahomes. It might be difficult to do that, but every year they don't touch that contract makes the following years even easier with the rising cap (which makes it easier to continue to not touch the Mahomes contract, especially while there's still dead money remaining from the previous restructure). Moving on from Orlando Brown, if he's not earning the contract he demands, would make such a plan easier to implement.

Keep JuJu if he takes 10 or so.

He's exceeded my expectations and I expected him to be our #1WR.

I like our WR core and think if Mahomes had more time, everyone would prosper.

I want to keep MVS. Like JuJu, Watson, Fortson, Hardman, Toney, Gray, Moore.

We need Oline help 1st and Edge Rusher 2nd.

10? Are you stupid? Juju isn’t accepting $10 million.

A more expensive version of Wylie doesn't sound like a very good idea to me.

Considering the team will carry 5-6, you can make an argument to take 1 in the first four rounds every year.

If you win the lottery on Hill, then you can flip for a huge gain before giving him a third contract.

A WR1 in my opinion makes us completely unbeatable. And we have to eventually prepare for a life without kelce or a lesser version of kelce. If Toney can stay healthy I can’t imagine a scenario where we want to keep hardman.

Can you imagine mahomes with a dk metcalf type sideline threat? I like our WRs but man would they cook if we moved each one of them one spot down.

Salary cap discussion brings out the dumbest in people. This thread is going to be scary.

Our WRs have always had size or speed/athleticism. I’d love to give mahomes a WR who does both.

I don't get the MVS hate either. At all. He drops a gimme every now and then, but he gets it back by making a great catch. He's made some really good contested catches on deep balls.

Like most of our WRs he is fine if we move him a notch down. He is our big play guy with the speed to go over the top. He’s our best guy to do it and he’s not crazy expensive. I’d rather that turn into more of a role than an every down thing. There are too many games where he disappears for long stretches and the games we struggle with the most are against physical defenses. He doesn’t help us there as much as I’d like.

I don’t think people have accepted the reality that we have to build around mahomes’ contract. We have to make compromises somewhere. I’d rather we keep building around our electric qb. I’d love an elite OL but functional will do just fine if we surround mahomes with playmakers. I’d love a balanced offense and defense, but I believe playmakers lessen the need for an elite defense.

We’ve gotta keep a wide window to play young draft picks and bargain basement players, and accept that solid but unspectacular play in several instances is more than ok.

I like how you think!

2 straight rings would be nice

squeak one out this year, next season a glorious coronation

Next season can be “Run It Back 2.0”!

We’ll start be re-signing Frank Clark, Andrew Wylie, and Orlando Brown!

Veach will be attacking OT and DE like bruce bogtrotter on chocolate cake.

or a hemophiliac through a package of bandaids!!!!!

Hmm, this is always people dreaming that we will have all this mountain of cap space and just a few people all new to sign.
We will have, as of now, 25 FA to sign or replace that count on this year's salary cap for more than that cap space you reference.

That’s what he’s making this year give or take. Come on man

no on obj people. Stop it

Spend every penny on Oline. We need to break records for Oline payroll every year we have Mahomes.

Gimme Ngadakoueoueoue, he's better than any edge we have, and I'll take old man JJ Watt for the limited snaps crusty veteran Suggs/Ingram/Dunlap role. He'd be a good mentor for Karlaftis, too.

Then give me a mountain of a NT. Just a huge ass Jabba the ****ing Hutt mother****er.

I'd definitely focus more on defense. With weak tackles, an average running game and average WRs, the offense is still the best the league. Even with all the talent in the world on the offensive side of the ball, a drive (or game) can still be wrecked by a penalty or fumble. The margin for error is too small against good teams and there's too much pressure on the offense to produce on every possession.

We need a DL that is consistently disruptive and an upgrade for Thornhill.

I disagree. We have the best qb in the nfl. Give him playmakers. He can do damage with a solid OL. Solid doesn’t mean shitty tackles. Solid means good. If you have playmakers you don’t need an OL as much. I love mahomes’ progression as an efficient qb. But I’d much rather let him sling it. We can win these games where our OL isn’t their best. What makes me more uncomfortable is when we get bodied by these physical teams where we just aren’t getting our WRs open fast enough.

Buffalo and Cincinnati are great examples of why I don’t love this. There are offenses that are just really really good and they’re going to get theirs against us. We can beat these teams in shootouts. I don’t love having to beat these guys with a balance of defense and an offense that does just enough.

Over the past few years what has lost it for us in the playoffs? Last year it was our offense. The year before our offensive line. Hell the defense bailed our offense out in the Super Bowl until we got it together in the 4th.

Our offense has become very efficient. But we know we are capable of so much more than that. We still have games like cincy and Tennessee and vs the rams where we are really really grinding for yards. Our production really downplays that these games were really difficult for our offense. Our WRs don’t match up well against really physical teams. And some teams have been able to figure out kelce just enough to make it real difficult for everyone else. Hell, we don’t necessarily have this version of kelce for too too long. We know mahomes can power his way through these games but he shouldn’t have to. We know he can flat out dominate if you surround him with talent.

I think veach has shown he can still build a solid defense without a whole lot of resources. It does feel like he needs a lot of investment to make them truly great. Meanwhile, do you think any defense is stopping us if we add a mclaurin or metcalf?

As much as I'd love to see Veach going up top for a guy like Jalin Hyatt to make this offense more explosive, you have to fix what ails you.

Right now, what ails KC is terrible tackle play.

It's difficult to get a starting caliber LT outside of the top 15. If you're going to get one, you have to make a serious investment. If you're not making that investment, you usually have an aging tackle and can find a nice project guy in the 3rd to 4th to develop.

League-wide, here's the distribution for Left and Right Tackles (AVE = average pick in that round, % = Count in that round out of 32 teams) using initial starters (i.e. before injuries happened):

If you swap Trevor Penning (R1-19) for James Hurst (CFA), that puts the league at 60% of LTs coming from Rnd 1.

Obviously, it's not necessary to take a tackle in round 1 but your best bet to get a starter is in that round on either side. At a minimum, it's best to take either by the end of Day 2 (78% of LTs taken by then and 72% of RTs).

I can't fathom Veach targeting an offensive playmaker right now when he not only needs to fix the atrocious tackle situation but also needs to fix the defensive line. Fixing the O-line will open this offense up as much as another playmaker will and Pat won't be running for his life and have injury risk.

You can upgrade terrible to average. I agree we can’t just leave a hole but you don’t have to put top 10 money into it either. Based on what we saw from veach his two places he wanted a big swing was wr and DE.

I think mahomes and Reid’s greatness is overrating our WRs. We shouldn’t just expect our pass offense to be efficient and for mahomes to carry all the water. We have the coach and qb to be elite. And while mahomes has been magical, games like Tennessee, cincy and buffalo were challenging for us offensively. We struggle with defenses who play very physical against our WRs. Several of our WRs disappear in stretches.

The reality is our defense can only do so much against powerhouse offenses line Cincinnati and buffalo. And in each of our biggest games (cincy 2x, and buffalo) it wasn’t the blocking or defense that let us down. It’s because we didn’t score on our last possessions. I just think you need to build the best possible passing game, and then you work hard to try to make the rest of the team as good as possible. I just don’t see a stud tackle moving that needle nearly as much as a stud WR

some don't want rings, they simply want the money :thumb:

He was 8 million the year before he signed with us.

This year his cap number is 3 but incentives can bring him closer to 9, not sure which he hit.

Also, much as I hope kelce has years and years left, we have to plan for life without him. I think we’d find out the limitations of our WRs very quickly without him. I love our WR room but everyone needs to be bumped down a spot for this to work. We don’t have a WR1. And it’s intriguing to think what mahomes would be like if he had a more traditional WR1. Not just tyreek where every WR has speed. An athletic WR with size and speed.

For '23 and 24'? No, I don't think you can count on beating Cincinnati in a shoot-out.

I don't think we can assume we can match Chase, Boyd, and Higgins no matter how much we spend.

And Burrow is good enough to go toe to toe with Mahomes. IF he has time to throw.

I think THAT is the key. But after '24, they'll be paying Burrow, and will have to make decisions on Chase, Boyd, and Higgins, and the institutional advantage they currently enjoy will level out. So if I'm Veach, I'm looking to fix the OT situation, and I'm investing in the defensive line.

Well, we have two other TE's that are developing nicely as weapons. No, they're not Kelce, but literally nobody that's ever played the position is.

If we had OT's that could ****ing block, this offense would look even better.

We should NOT spend a #1 or a ton of money for a WR in free agency. Lots of elite WR's come from other rounds in the draft. We should take one every year SOMEWHERE, but not at the exclusion of the gaping holes we have at OT and D-line.

Not in 2023 we shouldn’t, but look at the current list of FA WRs in 2024. Many will be signed before then, but the market is absolutely loaded. We can potentially address OL/DL this coming year and then find a top notch WR the following offseason.

they’re going to be tough to stop no matter what. Buffalo tried this by loading up their defense to stop us. So far it hasn’t worked. Mahomes thrashing defenses is inevitable. I think the same goes for burrow and allen. I can’t imagine the frustration for buffalo with all they’ve invested in their defense for us to have our way with them last year. The difference between this year and last year isn’t our defense. It’s our offense. As much as mahomes has gotten better we still have stretches where receivers flat out aren’t getting open.

What bothers me more about the buffalo and cincy losses this year isn’t that our defense didn’t do enough. It’s that our offense had stretches where they look stuck. You expect a defense to have challenges vs burrow no matter what. But we know our offense is capable of being unstoppable. that is every bit receivers getting open as much as it is OL issues. Too many coverage pressures. We need a WR1. you know what also helps pass pro? A WR who can quickly beat press. Who can bail his qb out on jump balls. Who can quickly find spots in the middle. Because we are having issues with very physical secondaries.

I agree we need to upgrade our tackles for sure. But do we have to pay top dollar to do it? Or at the expense of the right kind of WR1. That’s where I don’t agree. It seems people are content to have a balanced team with an extremely efficient offense. I want ti go back to stomping on peoples throats with our passing game.

What do our WRs look like when kelce isn’t drawing doubles and triples? Or when he isn’t there to be an automatic catch. If we lose kelce I think we figure out our WR room limitations very very fast. Again, I think we’re mostly there. But every WR needs to bump down one spot. Hell, what did Tennessee do? They limited kelce. And our offense looked completely stuck. Because our WRs right now feel like system guys.

JuJu has a $3M cap hit. he is on a very cheap contract.

It's not a WR problem. It's a tackle problem. We don't need a #1 WR, they need the billion dollar QB to not get antsy in the pocket and the T"s to not get blown by.

The offense is better this year than it was last year.

Of course you'd like to keep Hill, he's gone. Move on.

There are some reasonable people with acceptable takes, but you are correct, the majority have unreasonable numbers for what players will get. Goes back to my comment above...comments like this:

"Oh yeah, we should keep JuJu if he's willing to take 3 years, $18 million. Guy has to give us a discount because we know he really wants to play with Mahomes"

Sure, but a huge cost. What we do between now and then will determine whether we can afford to get into that arms race. Or whether we NEED to.

We've got Toney for 3 years cost controlled. Get that kid into a yoga studio all offseason, and maybe we've got something.

Skyy Moore, despite a slow start (which should have been expected) has been coming on.

We have a decision to make on Juju and MVS. We have a decision to make on Hardman, who despite not becoming a true #2 is still a real weapon. Missing time this year actually helps the numbers come contract talk time.

Take another WR in the 2nd-4th rounds to develop and see where you're at in '24.

I would argue that most (if not all), especially those under 35, want money. But there are always a number of idiots on here who have this fairy tale notion that players are in it to win championships.

I 100% disagree and especially against Cincy. The Bengals have routinely gotten a lot of pressure on Mahomes and they've done it quite easily in big moments. I think your view of the effectiveness of our WRs is off the mark. The WRs get open. They got open in the AFC title game last year and they have gotten open in games this year. Mahomes just doesn't have the time to go through proper read progressions because of the immediate pressure on such a high volume of plays.

The other thing about it is that Mahomes, for as good as he can be, is behind the mark on just taking what the defense gives him. Too often he's looking for select weapons, and especially Kelce, instead of just finding the open man. It was terrible in the AFC title game in the second half and it's been terrible in some big moments in tough games this year again. He has to start taking what's there and trusting other guys to make the play. If he doesn't do that, you can give him three #1 caliber WRs in there and it won't matter. He has improved some this year, but he's still going with hot reads when he shouldn't too often.

This offense vs defense debate is kinda the chicken OR egg…
I think Veach will look more at it like the chicken AND egg with OT and DE being the absolute priorities.

an almost entirely new WR corps, man. In a notoriously complex offense requiring post snap reads and route adjustments from the WR's in real time, on the fly.

I don't think they're 'system guys' so much as they have differing skillsets. You have a couple with incredible long speed in Hardman, MVS.. You have one that's very physical in Juju. You have a couple with elite quickness, with Hardman again, Moore, and Toney. There is some youth there with Moore and Toney, so there's some projection but we're not drafting top 5-we won't get the Jamarr Chase's.

Our problems offensively stem from 1)poor OT play, 2)Mahomes still sometimes will not take the easy outlet pass and 3)a lot of new parts.

Despite all of that, this is a top NFL offense. And Kelce won't just fall off the cliff, barring catastrophic injury. He may slow down, but he's got a long way to go before he's JAG.

This.

Both lines need addressed before anything else.

I’d re sign JuJu, sign a top LT and focus on revamping the DL

Like I said, I think we’ve got great WRs. But the all need to get bumped one position down. Juju is a great possession guy… for a WR that can open it up underneath. MVS is an over the top guy. Skyy is intriguing but likely not a WR1. Hardman and Toney are terrific… within a specific lane. All these guys get significantly better if we have a WR1 who can consistently beat stud CBs like tredavious white.

Most of our offense is run around efficiency so I don’t get the idea that mahomes needs to somehow be way more efficient. You know how burrow gets rid of the ball quickly? Chase quickly beats his man and then throws the ball anywhere remotely near his catch radius. Of course we gotta get better protection and mahomes needs to continue to progress as a pocket qb. We’re doing that. The idea that we need to put all our eggs in that basket for a qb this talented is a waste. We can run an efficient offense and have explosive playmakers at the same time.

When the **** did I ever say that? Although I think he’d be great. What I want is a WR1 who can quickly and reliably beat man coverage, even against the best CBs in the league. That’s gonna make our offense a hell of a lot more dangerous than an all world offensive line. We need a better OL, that doesn’t mean we need to put all our eggs in that basket.

Chase was the #5 overall pick. Where are we getting that?