Possibility of trading L’Jarius Sneed
 

As we know, crow successfully called the Tyreek trade last year before it happened with a good thread discussion.

This year I think our most likely trade piece could be L’Jarius Sneed. To preface this, I would like to keep him at a fair deal. However, bidness is bidness sometimes. Let’s examine the cases.

Case for trading:

1. He could ask for too much. He has never made the pro bowl or all pro team, so if he asks for $17+ million, I could see a trade happening.

2. This staff is the best in the NFL in finding and squeezing out the best from corners. Breeland, Ward, Fuller, Fenton, Sneed and the rookies from this year. All of them were excellent here and didn’t take long for the young guys to develop.
3. We have at least 9 draft picks. Maybe 10-11. We have more than enough ammo to draft one, or trade up for one if we so choose. We have drafted a corner every year under Spags but one, and that year was when we had 6 draft picks due to trading for Orlando Brown Jr.
4. The 3 corners did well this year. That’s a big feather in the cap having them all cheap for 3 more years. McDuffie can do a lot of what Sneed does (outside, inside, blitz). The cup would not be bare. And again…lot of draft capital.
5. The money freed up from Sneed could be used to keep someone else (Willie Gay?) or get a FA.

The case against:
1. He takes a team friendly contract.
2. We can’t get anything more than a 3rd rd pick for him in a trade.

What do you all think? If you’re Veach what’s your bottom line for money and trade compensation received?

Depends what you can get for him I supposed. Unless it's a top 60ish pick, I'd probably keep him and take my comp pick.

Ideally, they extend this off season before he makes all pro (and he just might).

Its weird to say but I almost love him more for his open field tackling than his coverage ability.

He tackles like a linebacker. It looked like he was going to tear Brday's head off when he sacked him this past season (shocked it wasn't called a roughing penalty, tbh).

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Our most likely trade piece.....

Did we sign Orlando Brown Jr to a record setting deal or did he and his agent say they wanna take a paycut to stay here and I missed it....?

OBJ was and still is our best trade piece for this season. He has a ton of trade value and him and the Chiefs already butted heads over his deal last year....and now he won a Super Bowl. His price isn't going down from a year ago.


As to the question, I'd re-sign Snead. We need a vet back there with all of our kids and he's likely the leader. Also it's a good thing to cover our home grown talents that have out performed their deals.

I don't mind having one high paid guy at every level of the defense.

Jones, Bolton, Sneed....then fill in around those guys with young talented we drafted + veterans looking to get their hands on a ring.

He's the new Mathieu for this defense and is just headed to his prime. I think he's an easy keep and probably will be 3 for 13 to 15 per. I'd have zero quarrels with that. Retaining a guy like Willie Gay is far less important than Sneed. He's not going to get you a haul of picks to retool the roster as Hill did.

The head-exploding trade option is Chris Jones and he would likely get you a couple of picks to retool with. I'm not championing that move like I did Hill, but I think its out there. It is difficult to maintain 30+M contracts when you are paying a QB top dollar, but Chris is the one player its pretty well worth it.

The most likely is Orlando Brown. I just don't think Veach places the same value on his ability as Brown does. He's going to draw a line in the sand again and I just don't think they'll meet at it.

For all the guys you listed who ended up working out, there's another list of guys we never got shit out of. So lets not just take DB development for granted quite yet, like we can just grow the mofo's on trees.

I'd be open to eventually trading boundary corners in Spags' D, or letting them walk in free agency like Ward.

But the defense we're running cannot work without Sneed. This isn't a hot take, and I'm not bashing the OP because I know what he's saying. But Sneed is a must re-sign.

He's also worth a lot more to us than he can legitimately bargain for. He's never made a Pro Bowl, he's never made an All Pro team. But he's good enough for either of those, and his versatility literally cannot be replaced.

I'd pay $16m/year for him, believe it or not. But he's likely to only command, like, $11m/year.

I hope it'll be closer to a 14 or so. I get your point though. I'd offer a 4/55 with 35~ of that guaranteed as soon as I could. If he makes all pro next year which is a legit possibility, then his price just skyrocketed. Then we're looking at Marlon Humphrey money.

He's young enough and a leader while being home-grown. Do it now and get it done before the cost grows.

Just a friendly reminder that Sneed got knocked out of the Bengals game on one of the first few plays of the game and the 3 rookie corners (and Cook) did a fantastic job against one of the best receiver corps in the league.

Watson has really taken to the Ward boundary corner, McDuffie can play Sneed’s position at a solid level and Williams is a nice #3.

But again it depends on the contract and possible return.

WTF GIF

What type of trade comp do you guys think we'd get for Sneed?

I'd hate to see him go, but we have had a lot of luck finding late round DBs recently.

Sneed is a guy we can pay, and should, in my opinion. The fact that we have 3 good CB's coming off their rookie seasons means we can absolutely allocate 2nd contract money to Sneed. He's so much more than 'just a corner'.

I agree with Chris here.

You've got 3 cheap options, so I can pay one and not worry about it.

If it’s a 3 yr deal or so then it would be good timing to move that money to McDuffie. Assuming he’s the guy who he looks to be at that time

Just being realistic .. Sneed doesn’t really have the name to bring a no brainer deal. I’d assume you get get a top 60 pick. And I’m not even considering it unless it’s top 40. I’d rather have him for another year and collect a comp pick

And it’s no guarantee that all three CBs are just going to keep improving. There are plenty of guys who looked good their rookie year and then did dick afterwards.

Ok, Wow that is a positive attitude. I will choose - :hmmm: You are WRONG! Get real man. This is just a ridiculous point of view.

If it were me, I'm extending Sneed ASAP. he's such a great chess piece.

You sign this guy. It's likely going to cost us keeping Thornhill, but of the two of them, I'm throwing the dollars at Sneed. Sucks, because I'm a Thornhill guy, but Sneed is too good and important to this unit.

Or….how about this? The genius that posted the shit below doesn’t call anyones takes ridiculous.

It's a difficult thing to follow through with.

Let's say you do that on both sides of the ball and these are the approximate values of "high paid"...
QB at 45m
TE at 15m
LT at 25m.
DT at 30m
CB at 18m
LB at 18m.

That's 151m of 224m in cap space, leaving 73m to field a team with a remaining 47 spots which is 1.55m per guy. That's not much room for even low-end or mid-tier guys and you definitely don't want that. You want to have a pretty balanced roster that at least has 5-6 mid-tier talents on each side of the ball.

So of that group above, you're definitely keeping the QB but what are you choosing not to pay? In you're case you don't have an elite TE and you don't have a top-tier LT because you probably have to free up 50m to have a team of about 25 min/rookie tier, 10-12 low-tier (2-4m) and 10 mid-tier (5-10m), and a few elites. Each elite pushes a couple of mid-tier guys down into the min range.

good point, Crow.

I think when you have a truly special player, entering his prime, you ought to try to get that done. And when I say 'special' I mean a player that transcends merely playing his position well. I mean a guy that does extra things that other guys can't do.

I think Sneed is a guy that fits that description. Jones, certainly. Anyone else on that defense right now? Not really. There are some very good players, but they're more just playing their position well.

If Bolton had Gay's speed, he'd be that guy. As it is, he's just a really good player.

For example.

FYI there’s a lot of love for the corner class this year. One coach said as many as 10 could be drafted int he first 2 rds and there was a lot of depth.

I think no matter what we should draft another one

Maybe.

But that also pushes down other players at positions we could use

Such a great point.
Welcome to Brett’s world needing to look 3-5 years ahead while estimating the future cap limits and balancing the cap dollars by position group.
Drafting well is obviously key, but not every draft year is like last year.

Well, the Bengals were also playing with jack and shit at OL and it was the first game against them recently we were actually able to generate significant and consistent pressure on Burrow.

Possibility of trading L’Jarius Sneed
 

I'm going to murder you if this happens.

Why is everyone so infatuated with trading our best players for picks all of a sudden? The Chiefs already have a surplus of picks. We don't need 20 more good players to field a competitive team; we need 2 or 3 more great players to complete a dominant roster.

Sneed excels at his position and is one of the few players we should pay market rate to retain. Sneed goes nowhere if I were GM.

Great points.

I would counter with asking how much of that per year money would be evened/leveled out through GM cap wizardry, and how far we can afford to kick the can down the road that way if we were to choose to do so....

We're already doing it, to some extent.

You have:
Mahomes - 49.2m
Clark - 28.7m
Jones - 28.3m
Thuney - 22.1m
Kelce - 14.8m
Reid - 12.7m
MVS - 11.0m

What are we going to have to do this year? Probably cut or significantly reduce Clark's hit and move money on Mahomes contract if we want to add OBj back into the mix and his first year will likely be at least 15.0m

When OBj's number goes up next year as well as Mahomes, you got Clark coming off entirely but you're still at 7 players at the threshold if Jones does get extended. That might mean you have to let Thuney go and most likely means MVS needs to come off the books.

These ideas that the Chiefs can just go and trade for a DHop and so on is what make me think it's difficult to manage. Yeah, you can make it work this year with some wizardry. Next year gets a bit more difficult because you don't want to keep kicking the Mahomes' can if you can avoid it.

It's not going to take long to know the plan. Maybe not all, but at least a significant part of the plan. The end date for taggging OBJ is March 7th. By March 15th, teams are required to be under the salary cap. So an interesteing week to week and a half coming up.

Man the more we REALLY look at the numbers, the more I think tagging and trading Brown is the way to go if at all possible.

If the goal is to compete EVERY year for a SB, I think it's the wise move. Brown is a good but not great player, and we just shouldn't overpay for that production.

I’ve gone back and forth a dozen times.

What would Brown fetch is what it all comes down to.. he was available and we got him for the equivalent of a 2nd rounder. He SHOULD be worth more since he’s shown he can be a productive LT.

If the jets offered 13, then it’s a no brainer. I just don’t know if we’d even get offered a first. Maybe if the bears trade down we could get 2 2nds??

It also doesn’t help that this FA class is trash.

I THINK I’m on the boat of signing him long term. But I’ll just trust Veach on this and not get too worked up

The 25M or so he's gonna want can be used to:

Extend Jones
Extend Snead
Sign a vet RT (Either Jawaan Taylor or McGlinchey)

All of those things could come from moving on from him. To say nothing of us moving up to get whomever at LT @ 13 or so.

We're not trading into the top 15. People need to let that dream die. It's not happening.

Buzzkill..../"But the chart syas if we gave up 4 7ths and next years 3rd we should be able to trade up!"

Yeah, I get it. It is a buzzkill.

But I fully expect 3 things:

1. The Chiefs re-sign OBJ
2. The Chiefs don't trade into the top 15 at all.
3. CP will bitch the entire time and well into the future.

As sure as the sun rises.

Man, seems like we could (should!) come up with less expensive replacements for Clark, Thuney and Brown. Everyone else on that list looks reasonable (to me).

Obviously, Brown is a free agent. How quickly can we get out from under Clark and Thuney's contracts?

Clark will not be here at that price, and to be fair to Thuney he played the last 2 years at low numbers and he's arguably the best guard in the league.

L’Jarius Sneed is not a difficult player to replace. Orlando Brown Jr is a difficult player to replace due to asset allocation and limited supply/ultimate demand.

It all comes down to dollars. If Sneed demands a big contract he should be traded

Thuney has played great. Again, all of this stress can be solved by getting rid of the weak link on the line (I'm not counting Wylie)...he's the worst out of our OL guys and he wants by far the most money. Orlando needs to take his desire for a 25M deal to another team.

This OBJ thing is an easy choice IMO.

With regard to Thuney it isn't a question of talent for me- he's indisputably great. I just wouldn't allocate the money to an offensive guard. I would prefer to spend money on other, more impactful, positions like QB, DE, LT, WR and the anamoly that is Chris Jones.

Every indication is that the Chiefs don't feel this way at all. OBJ will, in all likelihood, be back.

I just don't think the team agrees that he's not worth it. They genuinely seem to want to keep him.

I'm sure they want to keep him. I want to keep him. I don't want to do it at the cost of Snead/Jones/Creed/Smith....he's not worth all of that. I guess we'll see if Veach agrees with me, as I don't think OBJ is playing on the tag OR coming down off his desired price tag.

I think a lot of you guys are sticking your heads in the sand and just flat refusing to look at reality.

Brown is not going to come off of his demands.

Then the Chiefs are about to make him one of the highest paid LT's in the game, if not the highest.

He's not going anywhere.

No ****in' way.

If Veach wouldn't pay Hill, who actually IS elite that kind of money, he's not going to do it for Brown.

He might tag him and play him and draft his replacement; he might tag him and trade him, Brown might somehow come to his senses and sign a reasonable deal-but I think those options are in order of likelihood.

Agree 100%

I don't see a world where OBJ is making 150 or whatever with a massive chunk guaranteed here. Tyreek was and is a MUCH better player than Orlando and he got sent packing. Adding into the situation Jones, Snead, Creed and Smith all needing extensions and all of them also being much better players.

Doesn't seem like it fits Veach. I guess we'll see.

Depends what the compensation would be

This was exactly my thoughts, if I was going to do a mock for the forum this year (most years I manage one) I would be doing it on the basis of a Brown Tag and Trade... I just don't know what a realistic return is?

I agree this is probably the most likely outcome, even if it isn't what I would do.

It's a fascinating situation, the Chiefs clearly love Brown and Clark, but surely one or both has to go. I have no clue what will happen, there isn't even enough cap space to tag Brown currently.

I agree completely!

I think there is going to be a lot of changes on our team heading into the draft. I also feel something will happen during free agency as well as after the June 1st cuts. I think Veach has a plan and it will "reshape" our team going into the 2023 season. Change is good and it is headed our way.

The difference is you have a generational Coach/QB with a HOF tight end in which you can still make the offense work. Can you do that without a solid LT? I'd argue Brown is a top 10 LT. Sure you can draft one but that's always a crapshoot. What free agent are you going to find who can produce at a high level? I think HTIS is right with this one. Alot of people might not like it but it's too important of a position to gamble on.

You're probably going to be disappointed then.

They're not letting their starting LT walk after winning a Super Bowl.

Hill is a better WR than Brown is a LT. We all agree.

But that's just not the way this should be viewed in my opinion. It's so much easier to find WR's, as they showed this year.

We saw in 2020 what can happen when the LT spot falls apart.

Exactly.

In this case, a bird in the hand is worth 2 in the bush.

The reason they traded for OBJ in the first place was because they didn't want to be in this position.

He's coming back.

The Chiefs were clearly looking at OT prospects at the combine and more were a fit at LT than RT. It'll be interesting to see what transpires on that front.

There is simply no value in trading an underrated guy like Sneed. You're not going to get enough compensation. If they really don't want to pay him, you ride out his rookie deal, franchise him once, and then take the 3rd round comp pick when he walks.

You're not getting more than a 2nd if you trade him outright, and 1-2 extra years of his incredible play is not worth a one round difference in compensation. All that said, I think they'll pay him. He doesn't seem like the type who's going to demand a market setting deal or anything, and he's easily the second most valuable player on this defense.

Veach would be dumb not to have a backup plan in place just in case contract negotiations don't go as he planned. People thinking that he's just going to trade OBJ and then trade up for a LT are a crazy. The more realistic solution, outside of him signing a long term deal, is that they draft an OT in the first couple of rounds and let OBJ play on the tag this year.

Yep.

Everybody was convinced they were going to draft a tackle when they ended trading for OBJ. The Chiefs clearly aren't the type of team to hand the 2nd most important position on offense to a rookie.

Not the worst idea in the world and I wholly support it. There are a few guys I wouldn't mind in that scenario on day 2. At least you know going into the 2024 draft if you have to go get a guy on day 1 or not too.

Steen has really grown on me in that he just might be able to play LT and I think he can play RT at worst. He had a nice short shuttle and broad jump at the combine.

I really don't think playing a rookie comes into play that much, honestly.

I'm more inclined to believe that Veach felt he wasn't getting a LT at 31, ran his mocks, and thought the latest one would be available was to move up to 16. There's no way he thought, nor did anyone else except the Raiders, that Leatherwood was a LT and Darrisaw would instead drop to 23. A move from 31 to 16 is expensive, either at least a future 1st or a 2nd and 3rd. Trading for OBj was just a cheaper deal than moving to 16.

This is an eerily similar draft to 2021 with O-Line prospects but this time around the prospect or retaining OBj is expensive too.