Welcome back to the Arrowhead Pride Mailbag! Throughout the offseason, watch for your opportunity to submit your Kansas City Chiefs questions in The Feed, which is found on AP’s home page.
After Super Bowl LX, the NFL offseason is officially underway. Right now, the Chiefs appear about $58 million over the expected 2026 salary cap with 54 players signed. Let’s see what is on our readers’ minds about how Kansas City navigates the limit.
OzarkEd asks:
My question is very basic. To an outsider it appears to be a very complex calculation to determine a team’s total cap hit in a season. Yet, it also appears rather simple to restructure contracts to clear up needed cap space. What’s the point of having a salary cap if all a team that’s $50+ million over has to do is restructure a few contracts?
The NFL introduced the salary cap in 1994, which then was an astounding $34.6 million per team. The league’s owners have done a remarkable job of spinning that it is good for competitive balance. The cynic in me suspects that, truly, the owners wanted to control spending and have a mechanism to police each other from letting contracts get out of hand.
Initially, the salary cap closely resembled actual team budgets. Over the last 30 years, however, lucrative national broadcast contracts have put the league’s teams on equal footing. As such, teams have been freer over the last decade to push the boundaries of the salary cap.
Significant signing bonuses used to be rare outside of football’s elite talent. Now, the first year of almost every free agent deal is built around a signing bonus — that can be spread over up to five years — to manage the cap. Void years that make a two-year deal look like a five-year pact on paper for cap purposes will be covered later.
I am not one to say the cap is fake, but it has proven easily manipulated. One area that teams have had less success skirting is the league’s funding rule, which requires owners to immediately secure most future guaranteed salary on contracts via deposit in an escrow account. Every team has proven willing to test the limits of the salary cap. Not every ownership group is eager to repeatedly shell out needed cash for excessive spending.
The funding rule, more than the salary cap, is the reason for the currently perceived haves and have-nots.
nmt1 asks:
I’d like to understand why the Chiefs seem to be constantly in cap trouble whereas other teams always seem to be able to pretty much do whatever they want. I just don’t understand why some teams, like the Chiefs, are always strapped and others never seem to be.
To refer to the previous question, the Chiefs appear to have a firmer cash budget than some of the teams that are annually cited as free agency’s biggest winners.
General manager Brett Veach’s approach to the salary cap has been somewhat clear since the big money on quarterback Patrick Mahomes’ extension started kicking in around 2023.
The Chiefs value flat contracts. Examples are tackle Jawaan Taylor’s contract, paying exactly $20 million each year in Kansas City, or linebacker Nick Bolton’s deal that pays him $15 million annually. The earnings on the first year of each contract are mostly via a signing bonus that spreads the first-year earnings over the life of the contract. Thus, most of Kansas City’s big-money free agents see the salary cap impact of the contract’s second year increase dramatically.
The Chiefs also tend to spend their salary cap space a year ahead of time. Later in the week, we will cover the moves I expect Kansas City to make to get under the cap and have some room to add free agents. Spotrac estimates that the team has about $80.8 million in hypothetical 2027 salary cap space. Much of that will be allocated this spring as free agents are added.
This process has repeatedly led to the Chiefs rarely having significant salary cap space to roll into the next season and annually looking stretched thin financially. However, Veach and his crew have been good at stacking contracts (and having multiple restructure avenues) in a way that avoids any true salary cap crisis.
EdPodolak asks:
Why don’t the Chiefs like to use voidable years? Are the Chiefs being consistently low on “dead money” part of that?
For definition, void years are fake seasons added onto a contract to spread out signing bonuses that nullify at the start of a given league year. A player can sign a two-year contract for $30 million. A team can then designate most of the earnings as a signing bonus. The team could then add three “void” years onto the contract to greatly reduce the initial cap hit. The downside is that the rest of the signing bonus will accelerate when the player reenters free agency and be charged as “dead money” on the salary cap, even though the team would owe no more actual money to the player.
The Chiefs have not jumped on this trend that the Philadelphia Eagles seem to excel at. Time will tell if the yearly increases to the cap are enough to keep the Eagles’ bills from coming due in a way that puts them into a horrific cap situation.
While Kansas City generally avoids pushing cap charges into the future via void years, the post-2027 portion of Mahomes’ 10-year contract mostly serves the same purpose. Unless you believe Mahomes will willingly play in 2028 for less than $28 million (he won’t), the remainder of his deal serves little current purpose other than restructuring massive cap charges to manage current free agency.
Tight end Travis Kelce will be an interesting case. He is a free agent who will require a new contract if he returns in 2026. Should he play again, I suspect the Chiefs will be more willing to use void years to pay Kelce a fair salary while maintaining flexibility. I would also expect him to be nominally signed through 2028 to allow the Chiefs some cap relief if his retirement was processed after June 1, 2027.
PettyMahomes asks:
How badly has Veach hamstrung the Chiefs by trying to retain many of his drafted talent at non-premium positions – LB Nick Bolton, C Creed Humphrey, G Trey Smith? Or will the ability to do simple restructures on these contracts to make them tenable in the short term?
The biggest reasons the Chiefs seem hamstrung against the cap are massive, currently scheduled cap hits for Mahomes and defensive tackle Chris Jones. The two cap numbers combine to be over $123 million. With the pair scheduled to earn almost $92 million, there is a limit to what can be done to minimize the cap impact.
I see a lot of criticism for Veach regarding contracts for Bolton and the two interior linemen (as well as defensive end George Karlaftis). Provided the Chiefs continue to find contributors on rookie deals, I don’t think these contracts are significant problems. Veach has shown a willingness to reward players who dependably take on high snap counts.
Bolton’s three-year contract has minimal room for restructure. Should the Chiefs take a value swing at linebacker in April’s draft, however, they would easily be able to move on from Bolton in 2027 with less than $5 million in deal money.
Smith’s $23 million per season contract is not out of line with the current guard market. He could be a candidate to be restructured for cap room, though that could potentially make his 2027 cap number exceed $34 million. At any rate, Smith’s contract is structured to give the Chiefs flexibility to move off of the final season in 2028 if the team so chooses.
Humphrey is likely to be Mahomes’ center as long as the quarterback wants to receive snaps from him. By getting on his deal early, the Chiefs were able to defer Humphrey’s large cap hit until the upcoming season. He is also an option to restructure, although he might again find himself an extension candidate a year from now.
The Chiefs have been wise with structure when taking care of their own talent, although players at premium positions will prove a bigger test. Whether cornerback Trent McDuffie is extended or traded is among this offseason’s biggest questions. Should left tackle Josh Simmons pick back up as one of the league’s best in 2026, the clock will instantly start ticking to the 2028 offseason, when he would become extension eligible.
Thank you for reading this week’s Arrowhead Pride Mailbag! Later in the week, we will have a look at the Chiefs’s options for cap relief. Keep watching The Feed for an opportunity to ask your questions for our next offseason edition.
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