Essentially yes. But the Chiefs have leverage over Houston. Because they can threaten to cut him. That threat is harder to make for Berry. With two years left, you can basically frontload the contract. Convert the front half to signing bonus. But overall contract value could be consistent with the cheaper contract an older player gets.

It's actually in Houstons best interest to take a paycut. Believe it or not.
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Did we miss Houston when he was gone for a month? Sure didn’t feel like we were missing a $20 million asset.

I’m getting real sick of his shit lately too. Quitting on that play last week was inexcusable.
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Well yeah, most of the time it is.

Let's take Berry as an example.

Current Contract:
2019: 12.4 base, 4.0 prorate 2.95 guar base, 0.1 workout 16.50 tot
2020: 9.4 base, 4.0 prorate, 0.1 workout 13.5 tot
2021: 11.9 base, 4.0 prorate, 0.1 workout 16.0 tot
2022: 13.9 base, 0.0 prorate, 0.1 workout 14.0 tot.

Let's say you want to convert the maximum amount of 2019 salary to signing bonus as possible, that means you can convert up to $11.47 million in 2019 salary to bonus because he still has to meet veteran minimum salary of $930k for his tenure.

11.47/4 years is 2,867,500 per year.

New Contract:

2019: 0.93 base, 6.8675 prorate, 930k guar base, 0.1 workout 7.8975 tot
2020: 9.4 base, 6.8675 prorate, 0.1 work 16.3675 tot
2021: 11.9 base, 6.8675 prorate, 0.1 work 18.8675 tot
2022: 13.9 base, 2.8675 prorate, 0.1 work 16.8675 tot

Now you can't cut Berry in 2019 at all. If you cut him outright in 2020 you'd lose 235k against the cap and sit on 16.6025 in dead space. You could June 1 him in 2020 and save about 8.06 on the cap with 8.3 in dead in 2020 and 2021. Ideal years to cut are 2021 or 2022. You'd save 9.1 in 2021 with 9.7 in dead and obviously more if you June 1. The final year of his deal you'd get 14.0 savings with 2.8675 in dead.

Restructures are used to save money in the current year and push cap costs to later years and that is pretty well it.

If you did a restructure and extension, a good person to use as an example would be Houston in the final year of his deal. Extending him by 2 years with modest salaries in the extension years and converting a huge chunk of his 2020 salary to bonus money would be the ideal way to go. If you want an example, I think Terrell Suggs did this with Baltimore.
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I’ve got no desire to extend Houston. Takes too many plays off it looks to me like, it honestly has ever since he injured that knee.
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You would too if your bullshit defense left you on the field for 10 plays every drive. He's not worth what it costs now. But he's definitely worth keeping if we can and should restructure him for cheaper. I'm willing to give him the benefit of the doubt.
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Interesting.

I still might lean towards releasing Houston and saving 14 million towards the cap, and Berry post June 1st and saving 9.5 million towards the cap. That gives us roughy 66-67 million, when added to the 43 million we should have according to over the cap, to resign/shore up key positions in '19.
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At this point, Houston's next contract might approach more of Ryan Kerrigan / Derrick Morgan / Bryan Orakpo territory. You don't have to cut him. Restructure his contract to be worth around $10M per year. We'd save $6M per year to keep a quality OLB. Even better if we can load it with injury incentives, which to me is the only reason I'd be nervous about his next contract.
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Chiefs want to cut Houston's salary cap # down.

Houston will want a contract with less base salary, and more guaranteed money. And would probably take a hometown discount to do it.

It's a win-win for both to restructure Houston to a cheaper contract. To get better injury incentives, we may pay a little bit more non-guaranteed money, but we stop wasting money paying him to sit on the bench.

We should restructure Houston. Not cut.
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Makes sense.
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What is Chiefs fans obsession with keeping stars of yesteryear like it's 2013?
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This says he played 98% of snaps last week.

Week 16: 98%
Week 15: 91%
Week 14: 93%
Week 13: 86%
Week 12: BYE
Week 11: 80%
Week 10: 67%
Week 9: INJ
Week 8: INJ
Week 7: INJ
Week 6: INJ
Week 5: 27%
Week 4: 97%
Week 3: 94%
Week 2: 85%
Week 1: 77%

Average excluding games he missed: 81%
That jumps to 87% of snaps if you drop the game he was injured in.
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I bought a jersey, bro.
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Good Question... Maybe the better question is:

What is Chiefs ownership's obsession with keeping stars of yesteryear?

Because it keeps the fans coming back? And in the grand scheme of things, isn't that what it's all about anyway?
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I'm good with keeping stars at a fair price. The problem with Houston is that he's overpaid. Not that he's unvaluable. We kept dj and Hali and Charles even when we knew they weren't valuable anymore. Not even the same thing. But before that, was more than happy with keeping dj and Hali beyond their first contract. We got lots of great years out of them.
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This organization has always had a problem letting go, I think a lot of that was because for a long time they couldn't draft for shit so there was no confidence they'd find a replacement.
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