Chiefs Restructure Chris Jones, Travis Kelce; Will Have More than $20M for Free Agency
The Kansas City Chiefs have reportedly restructured the contracts of tight end Travis Kelce and defensive tackle Chris Jones, freeing up additional cap space ahead of NFL free agency.
In his latest MMQB, Albert Breer of Sports Illustrated detailed the Chiefs' new moves — reportedly restructuring with Jones and Kelce — along with some notes about their previous headline-making moves — releasing starting tackles Eric Fisher and Mitchell Schwartz.
The Chiefs’ decision making with their tackles might not be quite what you think. And I’m not saying they were going to say goodbye to Eric Fisher and Mitchell Schwartz regardless of their injury situations. But I’ve been told by multiple people connected to the situation there that this was always going to be a turning-the-page offseason for K.C. with its offensive line, regardless of what happened with those guys health-wise, or in the Super Bowl as a result of those health issues. Is it possible that those guys might’ve made the cut if they were healthy, for the transition? Sure. Maybe. But that they weren’t, that there was a question whether either would be ready for camp and that their ailments (back for Schwartz, Achilles for Fisher) were problematic ones for big men in their thirties, made it so the Chiefs couldn’t allot $25 million of space to them in a tight-cap environment.
Maybe Fisher will wind up back there, and maybe Schwartz, if he decides to keep playing, will too. Either way, the Chiefs have created space to start, in earnest, their reset in what they’ll put in front of Patrick Mahomes for the next few years, with a rich draft class there and some free-agent options at those positions (Trent Williams, Riley Reiff, Russell Okung). And now, they’ll have room to operate. Last week, at this point, they projected to be over $20 million in the red on the cap. After these moves, plus simple restructures I’m told are coming on Patrick Mahomes’s, Chris Jones’s and Travis Kelce’s contracts, they’ll have more than $20 million to spend.
This sets the expectation that the Chiefs will have roughly $20 million in salary-cap space to spend in a chaotic 2021 free agency period, likely to rebuild the offensive line that Breer detailed the dismantling of.
To read Breer's full MMQB, click here.
Read More: Patrick Mahomes' Contract Structure is a Blessing for the Chiefs, Curse for the Rest of the NFL
