@ctchiefsfan 340857 wrote:

Bike…You’ve brought up a fascinating possibility. One that has been floating around in my head with no particular shape and you sort of chrystalized it for me. Bear with me for a moment please…..

We are going to eat $3.6 million on Alex’s contract no matter what. Then there is a roster bonus of $2 million so if we put him on the 53 man roster he now costs us $5.6 million and somewhere there is a $500K workout bonus. But that still leaves us with $14.5 to $15 million in cap savings if we put him on the roster but trade him before the preseason or it might be week 1….not quite sure on the date. So that extra $2 million would buy us several more weeks to try to make deal but still get some big cap savings and hopefully an important pick in 2019. So we could keep him through the pre-season and maybe save about $11.5 million on the cap hit. How do we get under the cap enough to pay for our draft picks? Well….Tamba being gone will save $8 million so that almost covers our deficit and our draft picks. And since we all know that good QBs get injured in the pre-season and early season on a regular basis that means an Alex Smith that nobody will bid for in July might suddenly have HUGE VALUE in August because we held on to him a little longer or on any weekend when a “name” QB went down up to the trade deadline and still in theory save about $8.5 million on the cap. You really brought up an interesting point. We can essentially keep Alex on the market up to the trade deadline and still save about $8 million which might come in real handy just before the trade deadline.

Of course I’m going a bit beyond my knowledge here, but by my understanding of how NFL contracts work, the above is all possible. The longer you keep him the less cap space you save but maybe his value triples if Carson Wentz or someone similar goes down in week 2?

Playing around with these ideas is FUN!

You bet! But here’s another thought. If Reid can’t trade Smith for the picks he wants – Smith stays. For all we know, Reid has no intention of letting Smith go. I don’t think there is any way on earth the Chiefs release Smith outright. There are other ways to get our cap down per my previous post.
We shall see!

@matthewschiefs 340860 wrote:

Great info here.

Guess it’s possible to keep him around I just don’t see them actually doing it. The Mahomes era is beginning

I hear ya. But another year behind Smith can only help Mahomes. Remember, Aaron Rodgers sat for three years behind Farve…

@Bike 340854 wrote:

Well, let’s talk about our sucky cap situation for a second.
2 players that will most certainly be gone with zero dead money:
Revis – 4.5 mil cap hit
Ford – 8.7 mil cap hit
There’s over 13 mil right there.
Players that could, or should be released:
Hali – 9.4 – 1.7 dead money
Johnson – 10.2 – 2.2 dead money
Bailey – 8 – 2 dead money
Parker – 7 – 2 dead money
Everybody else that is taking up big chunks of cap space really has too much dead cap to outright release.
So there is 49 million freed up right there. And that’s just outright releases. We should be able to trade one or two of those guys. And if we could restructure Houston and Fisher, that could free up some more.
Berry has a whopping 25 mil dead cap space, so he ain’t going nowhere.
Doable? I dunno.
But that is one way to keep Smith for the remainder of his contract.

And keep in mind, all them players mentioned above come from our defense – a defense that collapsed to an average Tennessee team and knocked us out of the playoffs.

@matthewschiefs 340865 wrote:

Very true but the Packers didn’t put what we did into Mahomes in terms of giving up the picks for him. He kinda fell into their laps .

Agreed. If I remember right, we picked DJ right before GB picked Rodgers.

And what pisses me off even more: 5 million in dead cap we have to pay this year for the release of Jeremy Maclin.

@ctchiefsfan 340876 wrote:

Just so. Hard to figure how to work that into the cap though.

Not really. Check out my post below…