USA Today:
Chiefs got fleeced by the Seahawks
https://ftw.usatoday.com/2019/04/gra...ced-the-chiefs
Now, there are worse ways to spend cap space, but this deal didn’t happen in a vacuum. The reason Kansas City was in need of a pass rusher in the first place was its decisions to trade pending free agent Dee Ford to San Francisco for a second-round pick and let the aging-but-still-productive Justin Houston go to Indianapolis for a modest deal. In all, Ford and Houston signed for seven years, $110 million, including $51.8 million in guaranteed money, with their new teams. That’s two ultra-productive players for, essentially, the price of Clark.
Now, you might be thinking that the Chiefs defense was awful last year and the biggest culprit in all of their losses, and you’d be correct. But that had little to do with Houston and Ford, who combined for 125 QB pressures. No other teammates combined for more. Clark managed an impressive 64 on his own, which is 16 more than Houston tallied but 13 fewer than Ford’s total. Pro Football Focus graded Ford as the best pass rusher in 2018. Houston ranked fifth. Clark ranked outside the top-20.
(This is all without taking into account Clark’s
troubling history with domestic violence, or the time he
tweeted to a female reporter that she wouldn’t last long in the business and would end up cleaning his fish tank.)
So, essentially, Kansas City gave up a first-round pick and about $12 million in guaranteed money for a player who isn’t any better than either of the TWO players he’s being asked to replace on his own. The Chiefs’ pass rush, which was the only above average facet of the defense, is somehow worse off than it was before the offseason began.