It would be a worse decision to sign ford long term than to keep houston another year. Houston is a better overall player.
[Reply]

This is no time to be sentimental, Eric Berry has done fuck all for 2 years, if you refuse a paycut after that then fuck you.
[Reply]

Houstons number this year is 21 million dollars...that's a lot higher than Fords tag number.
[Reply]

Berry wouldn’t sniff anything close to his current salary on the open market and Houston likely wouldn’t either. Their agents have to know that when approached about restructuring.
[Reply]

That's the way I'd approach it too.

But I don't see the Chiefs doing it that way. They let Berry linger on the active roster all season.
[Reply]

Ya, but cutting houston only saves $14M while tagging Ford will prob cost 15 or 16M. Houston has really only had that one ACL and had the chiefs not rushed him back he wouldn't have re-tore it and missed more time. Houston is more likely to play a full season since Ford has only had one full season. Plus houston is more well rounded as far as amount of pass rush moves and stopping the run.

The other advantage to keeping houston on his current contract is that we have an out each year. If we sign ford long term it could end up like berry's contract. I say tag and trade him while his value is peaked.
[Reply]

Berry on the other hand needs to gtfo of town. Clark needs to put his emotions aside and let the chiefs make football decisions.
[Reply]

It's unfortunate because they're at a point where ripping off the band-aid would be a great thing to do.
[Reply]

Justin Houston is payed like he's the best defensive player in the league. No one can argue to me that he is still worth that deal. This team has a bunch of overpaid dudes on defense, go look at the cap numbers this defense is paid like it's top 10.

Personally I think it'd be good if they just moved on from the aging injury prone older players at this point. Berry and Houston have literally played in something stupid like 35 out of 100 possible games together. That isn't accurate but it's something like that.
[Reply]

Ya it is really low. But houston hasn't had near the amount of injuries that ford or berry have. I don't think he is worth 21M a year, but when you look at the bigger picture and see we have a year to year option on releasing him I like the flexibility.

The ideal scenario to me would be tag/trade ford and draft a pass rusher. keep houston for one more year while he, kpass and speaks develop then release houston next year and have no big contracts at all. I just think if you release houston then that is a sign they're gonna dole out another bloated contract and find themselves in the same situation rather than bite the bullet for one more year while guys develop.
[Reply]

That doesn’t matter though. The Chiefs have to pay them the guaranteed money that they signed for.

If the Chiefs cut them, they’ll just get more guaranteed money from another team on a new deal.
[Reply]

I think the problem is that we gave these guys 6 year deals. That’s too long to have a player on a deal that isn’t a QB IMO.

We need to focus on shorter deals. If your name is not Patrick Mahomes, you should get no more than 4 years on a deal.

Perfect example is Chris Jones and Tyreek Hill. Give them a 4 year deal that starts after their last year of their rookie deal (2019). Can get out reasonably instead of being stuck.
[Reply]

I'm not sure how I can get on board with the "cut Houston" mindset. He may not be living up to his very hefty salary but overall he is still a plus player at a premier position and is very much so a leader within the locker room. Even if he is cut, I don't see the moves that can be made with the savings that will end up improving the team more than what we are already at with Houston there.


I get CP being cranky about overpaying a guy, but at the end of the day I'd consider Houston a top 10 performer for us last year and I don't see how letting him go would make this team better and let's also realize Spags will likely not be sending him into coverage nearly as much as Bob did, so that in its own should improve his rush/pressure numbers and therefore ease the butthurt that many may have with him.
[Reply]

This teams secondary is a dumpster fire, if they have no money to do anything about it, it's not going to be pretty.
[Reply]

I really want to have Houston for another year at least but he absolutely has to accept a paycut. There's no other way around it.
[Reply]