Originally Posted by JakeF:
Ramsey thinks he's Deon Sanders, he is going to want stupid high money. I wouldn't be shocked if he asked the Jags for a contract that made him the highest-paid defender in the league.
The salary cap
The Chiefs are in a strange cap situation at the moment. According to Over The Cap’s cap calculator, the Chiefs currently have $21.9 million in cap space. However, in 2020 the estimated space is at $2.2 million. The number jumps back up in 2020, even if the cap is estimated to stay flat from 2020 to 2021 (which is highly unlikely given the new collective bargaining agreement looming), to $58.9 million.
The Chiefs have a number of players signed to large contracts over the next few years, and plan to extend Mahomes’ deal as soon as they can (which is after the 2019 regular season ends). That deal will undoubtedly be the largest contract in NFL history, and there are any number of ways it could go. The only certainty is this: the Chiefs’ cap situation is about to get much more complicated.
The NFL’s two largest contracts at cornerback are at or a hair above $15 million per season. It’s worth noting that this is at least several million dollars a year less than what it will likely take to re-sign Jones, who at defensive tackle will almost certainly require $18 million per season or more.
Can the Chiefs have their cake and eat it too? Can they manage to trade for Ramsey, sign Mahomes to his mega-deal and still extend Jones?
I wanted to see if I (with a very basic understanding of contract structure) could make it all work. The short answer is this: yes, but it’s complicated. Without going into all the details, using the cap calculator I was able to sign Ramsey to a five-year, $80 million contract to make him the highest-paid cornerback in the league. I was then able to extend Jones for another 5 years beyond 2019 with a $114 million deal that would surpass Fletcher Cox’s deal with the Eagles by a sizable amount. And after, I still had the money to work through Mahomes’ extension.
However, that much work required a lot of careful structuring of both Ramsey and Jones’ deals, and came at a significant cost. I was forced to cut Jordan Lucas and Reggie Ragland to have $2.4 million of breathing room in 2019. The 2020 cap was much more difficult, requiring cuts of Sammy Watkins, Cam Erving, and Daniel Sorensen, followed by a contract extension for Eric Fisher in order to bring his 2020 and 2021 number down to more manageable levels.
Once those moves are in place, the money is there to extend Mahomes, but that’s largely it. Outside of smaller transactions, the Chiefs core roster would be locked into place until 2021, when flexibility with some of the bigger contracts would start to come into play. Kansas City would be unable to make any sizable free agent moves during the next few offseasons, which includes extending any of their current cornerbacks besides Ramsey in our hypothetical world.
So yes, the salary cap is a massive complicating factor here. While the Chiefs could make it work, they would lose their financial flexibility for the next several years. The question that must be answered at Arrowhead is whether it’s worth it to (in theory) increase their chances at a Super Bowl during that time. With such an all-in move, anything less would be viewed as a failure. [Reply]
Originally Posted by Dunerdr:
Well you are shit out of luck here!
I love you baby!
Gimme some sugar. Don’t forget the daily routine, check chiefsplanet every moment and second of the day because you never know when Jalen Ramsey will be here? Everything else in life could just go **** itself.
Sincerely,
The life of several chiefsplaneteers
p.s. wash, rinse and repeat for several weeks [Reply]