Projected cap space according to Spotrac. Chiefs have a lot of work to do.
January 26, 2026
Projected cap space according to Spotrac. Chiefs have a lot of work to do.
27 comments
Chiefs can flip by a $100m with half a dozen easy moves
They have like 23 players entering free agency and they’re still 55 mil in the hole.
I feel like we are gonna be looking at a dramatically different roster next year
People are gonna see this and think the magic is over. I mean, it might be, but this is definitely misleading. Weve got some money tied up in some easy spots to create space.
$40m+ hanging out in the Mahomes contract. Jawaan is Ja-gone.
How are the saints right next to us? Who they paying to be so bad?
Plenty of ways to make cap space.
Restructure candidates:
Patrick Mahomes (45M base salary, 10M roster bonus)
Chris Jones (19M base salary, 16M roster bonus)
Trey Smith (19M base salary)
Nick Bolton (14M base salary)
Creed Humphrey (14M base salary)
George Karlaftis (10M base salary)
Cut Candidates:
Jawaan Taylor (20M in savings)
Kristian Fulton (5M in savings)
Mike Danna (9M in savings)
Drue Tranquill (6M in savings)
Noah Gray (4M in savings)
Chamarri Conner (3.5M in savings)
Trade/Extension Candidates:
Trent McDuffie (13M savings)
The cap is fake and the show will go on
There might be plenty of ways to make cap space, but this is still a very bad position.
1. A lot of moves to make cap space often have long term consequences. Restructuring Mahomes contract just means he’ll be more expensive in the future for example.
2. The we apparently have the worst cap situation in the league, while not having that great of a roster, is also a huge issue. If we were deep in the hole, but also had a super team, alright sucks. But we are deep in the hole and have only an ok team.
I know it won’t be popular but really wish they’d just have a cap and roster reset year in 2026. Team is old, talent deficient, and expensive. Additionally Mahomes will be recovering from a brutal knee injury and the schedule is hellacious.
Just take all the cap medicine you can in 2026 and trade whoever has value. Then get ready to go in 2027.
Again well aware they won’t do any of this. Instead they’ll restructure several contracts and sign an expensive RB in free agency. Will then draft a DE or WR in the first round who won’t make an impact in year 1. And the team will go 9-8 and miss the playoffs.
Thanks I hate it
Not really. Restructure Mahomes. Cut Taylor. Boom
Pretty easy to get under. Cutting players like Taylor and Mike Danna saves close to $27 million I think after you factor in dead money. The rest you could restructure existing contracts like they have done in the past few years.
How is this the *projected* cap space when there’s a bunch of obvious cuts that everyone knows are going to be made?
No, there’s not a lot of work to do. Restructuring Mahomes, Smith, and Bolton while cutting Taylor and trading McDuffie gets the Chiefs to $35M in cap room, which is enough to both sign the rookie class, the handful of FAs they want to keep, and probably even get a sneaky signing of a hard target FA.
What are they doing down in New Orleans 😂
We also have the least dead cap by far and a few easy moves gets us well on the other side of this.
I hate Trey Smith’s contract. I like Smith and think he is a good player, but that is a lot of money for Guard. Especially a Guard who is not a great Guard.
He played out his 4 years and held our feet to the fire. Veach gave in. He wouldn’t let him walk. So he overpaid.
People wanting to “throw away” a year of Mahomes is insane. The AFC is still wide open.
Even worse is I think that’s only from 37 players.
I think we need to gear up for some bad years incoming. Shouldn’t be awful like last year every year but it’s going to be a few years before we are good again.
Omg that Trey Smith deal was so stupid
Mahomes restructure will get us probalby half of this back. That’s inevitable. Or potentially a new contract with him entirely.
The Jawaan cut gets the rest.
That gets you to back over the cap, but you’ve now still got to re-sign a bunch of guys.
McDuffie is gone IMO. Can’t afford him and I don’t think he’s worth 30M a year. Plus we can use the draft capital to replace expensive guys with cheap guys.
With the expected moves of restructure of Mahomes (44.3M), cutting Taylor (20M) Danna (8.9M), and Tranquil (6M) opens up about $79M getting us to about 24M in the black without doing really anything. An extension for McDuffie can open up 9.9 M, a trade opens up 13.6 M. It isn’t a great situation, but realistically they can also sign some backloaded deals. I would hope they could get some draft picks and hit on them.
Veach not hitting on the 2023 draft class is hurting us right now as this is the year where we would be seeing the fruits of that and they just aren’t there. The good news is the ’22 draft class is probably going to return some picks for the ’27 draft class.
At least we have a better draft position this year. 😞
I’ve come on here and said we need to do a lot of work on our contracts and I got downvoted to hell.
27 comments
Chiefs can flip by a $100m with half a dozen easy moves
They have like 23 players entering free agency and they’re still 55 mil in the hole.
I feel like we are gonna be looking at a dramatically different roster next year
People are gonna see this and think the magic is over. I mean, it might be, but this is definitely misleading. Weve got some money tied up in some easy spots to create space.
$40m+ hanging out in the Mahomes contract. Jawaan is Ja-gone.
How are the saints right next to us? Who they paying to be so bad?
Plenty of ways to make cap space.
Restructure candidates:
Patrick Mahomes (45M base salary, 10M roster bonus)
Chris Jones (19M base salary, 16M roster bonus)
Trey Smith (19M base salary)
Nick Bolton (14M base salary)
Creed Humphrey (14M base salary)
George Karlaftis (10M base salary)
Cut Candidates:
Jawaan Taylor (20M in savings)
Kristian Fulton (5M in savings)
Mike Danna (9M in savings)
Drue Tranquill (6M in savings)
Noah Gray (4M in savings)
Chamarri Conner (3.5M in savings)
Trade/Extension Candidates:
Trent McDuffie (13M savings)
The cap is fake and the show will go on
There might be plenty of ways to make cap space, but this is still a very bad position.
1. A lot of moves to make cap space often have long term consequences. Restructuring Mahomes contract just means he’ll be more expensive in the future for example.
2. The we apparently have the worst cap situation in the league, while not having that great of a roster, is also a huge issue. If we were deep in the hole, but also had a super team, alright sucks. But we are deep in the hole and have only an ok team.
I know it won’t be popular but really wish they’d just have a cap and roster reset year in 2026. Team is old, talent deficient, and expensive. Additionally Mahomes will be recovering from a brutal knee injury and the schedule is hellacious.
Just take all the cap medicine you can in 2026 and trade whoever has value. Then get ready to go in 2027.
Again well aware they won’t do any of this. Instead they’ll restructure several contracts and sign an expensive RB in free agency. Will then draft a DE or WR in the first round who won’t make an impact in year 1. And the team will go 9-8 and miss the playoffs.
Thanks I hate it
Not really. Restructure Mahomes. Cut Taylor. Boom
Pretty easy to get under. Cutting players like Taylor and Mike Danna saves close to $27 million I think after you factor in dead money. The rest you could restructure existing contracts like they have done in the past few years.
How is this the *projected* cap space when there’s a bunch of obvious cuts that everyone knows are going to be made?
No, there’s not a lot of work to do. Restructuring Mahomes, Smith, and Bolton while cutting Taylor and trading McDuffie gets the Chiefs to $35M in cap room, which is enough to both sign the rookie class, the handful of FAs they want to keep, and probably even get a sneaky signing of a hard target FA.
What are they doing down in New Orleans 😂
We also have the least dead cap by far and a few easy moves gets us well on the other side of this.
I hate Trey Smith’s contract. I like Smith and think he is a good player, but that is a lot of money for Guard. Especially a Guard who is not a great Guard.
He played out his 4 years and held our feet to the fire. Veach gave in. He wouldn’t let him walk. So he overpaid.
People wanting to “throw away” a year of Mahomes is insane. The AFC is still wide open.
Even worse is I think that’s only from 37 players.
I think we need to gear up for some bad years incoming. Shouldn’t be awful like last year every year but it’s going to be a few years before we are good again.
Omg that Trey Smith deal was so stupid
Mahomes restructure will get us probalby half of this back. That’s inevitable. Or potentially a new contract with him entirely.
The Jawaan cut gets the rest.
That gets you to back over the cap, but you’ve now still got to re-sign a bunch of guys.
McDuffie is gone IMO. Can’t afford him and I don’t think he’s worth 30M a year. Plus we can use the draft capital to replace expensive guys with cheap guys.
With the expected moves of restructure of Mahomes (44.3M), cutting Taylor (20M) Danna (8.9M), and Tranquil (6M) opens up about $79M getting us to about 24M in the black without doing really anything. An extension for McDuffie can open up 9.9 M, a trade opens up 13.6 M. It isn’t a great situation, but realistically they can also sign some backloaded deals. I would hope they could get some draft picks and hit on them.
Veach not hitting on the 2023 draft class is hurting us right now as this is the year where we would be seeing the fruits of that and they just aren’t there. The good news is the ’22 draft class is probably going to return some picks for the ’27 draft class.
At least we have a better draft position this year. 😞
I’ve come on here and said we need to do a lot of work on our contracts and I got downvoted to hell.