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Originally Posted by duncan_idaho
Considering KC has $45M in roster bonuses (Mahomes and Jones) it can restructure, and that a Hill extension is priority and likely reduces his 2022 cap number, I think the cap crunch is less terrifying than you guys are initially reading.
It is hard to see KC finding the cap $$ to keep both Orlando Brown and Tyrann Mathieu and do something more than fill the rest of the roster with scrubs, so I think this is it for the Honey Badger.
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I think you're probably right at least as it relates to Jones. But man, at some point you gotta pay the piper on Mahomes. Every dollar you defer is just another one you've gotta find the following season.
And Jones, if he has the kind of year he's capable of at DE, is gonna find himself in a whole new salary bracket as a dominant DE. They can surely get that $29 million figure down with an extension, but he'll be 28 at that point and is gonna want to be compensated as a premier DE in exchange. He's gonna look at that deal Myles Garrett signed through his age 31 season at $25 million/season and think that another couple of years added onto his deal at $25 million/per seems pretty fair...
As for Hill, I think we'd be lucky to see that cap hit fall to any lower than about $14 million. Cooper's year 1 hit was $12.5 million and he doesn't have the potential or production of Hill. Hill's cap hit next year is only about $16 million next year as it stands. Sure, Veach could bonus him out, but again, you can only kick so many cans down the road before they bite you.
Anybody paying attention knew that Veach's job would get incrementally harder every year and that a soft-reboot would probably be inevitable at some point. I'm guessing they'll keep trying to maximize Kelce's remaining premier seasons as those will probably coincide pretty closely with Jones and Hill. But every step they take in doing so is going to make the crash that comes in 2024 or so that much more jarring.
And if this OL comes together nicely and we're looking at the 2025 season with a nuked salary cap and a bunch of FA o-lineman hitting the market at about the same time...well wouldn't it be a bitch and a half to lose a bunch of talented young OL because we held on a year too long or gripped the reins just a little too tight over the previous season or two?
This team will contend for a decade because of the dude under center provided we don't have to scorch the earth at some point in the middle. You can't go all-in on every hand without eventually paying for it.