@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.

HOT DAMN! Way more information than I had taken the time to collect. Thanks for putting it all in one place.

IMO, Revis is gone, Hali is gone. So that’s about $12 million.

At $8.7 million Ford should go if we can get a stud OLB in the draft or pick up a decent aging veteran for less (maybe $5-$6 million). Ford is good, but he ain’t (IMO) $8.7 million good.

IMO DJ, Parker and EB ain’t going nowhere.

So I figure that when all is said and done maybe we are adding maybe $14 to $19 million to our cap space. Deduct the $5 million we are supposed to be over the cap next year, plus $4 million for draft picks and we have about $5-$10 million in available cap space. Throw in any kind of a decent trade for Alex to get us some draft picks and we’d be at $22-$27 million in cap space. Not rich but in decent shape and maybe with enough cash to play in the aging veteran free agent market to fill a glaring need or two.

@Bike 340864 wrote:

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.

Excellent point! Defense is where we need the most help. Especially RUN DEFENSE.

@Chiefs4life24 340883 wrote:

Why shouldn’t we cut DJ and Parker. IMO anywhere we can cut savings we should do it

Yes, DJ is slowing down. But he is still a team leader in the locker room and on the field. Remember that almost strip he had in the closing minutes of the Titans game that the Zebras screwed us out of? We NEED those kind of people.

Parker I consider “borderline” at his price but we must keep in mind that all these cap savings we are talking about are all coming from our Defense…our same Defense that wound up in the bottom 8 in the NFL. I don’t care how good Mahomes is but if our Defense is giving up 35 points per game we are going to be a cellar-dweller. There is only so much we can strip away from our already marginal Defense. They were really good at “bend but don’t break” for 4 years. but this year they just bent TOO MUCH.

@Bike 340887 wrote:

Consider this: 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.

And RIGHT THERE is the conundrum. We are caught between a rock and a hard place. We need cap space…DESPERATELY. Our Defense is already weak. We’re terribly short on draft picks. Something HAS TO GIVE. And as much as I like Alex AND I REALLY DO, selling Alex is the only realistic fix I see. Of course…I’m not an NFL head coach or GM and that is a DAMNED GOOD THING!