Chiefs Have Pulled Off An UNPRECEDENTED GENIUS Move

[00:00:00]All right, let's talk about the Kansas City Chiefs. The Chiefs have been quietly lurking this entire off-season.

[00:00:04]I think they're set up very nicely for the 2026 campaign, but the Chiefs quietly made one of the more, I'll say this, unprecedented moves in NFL history, not just recent history, NFL history at large. But when you dive into the specifics, it's absolutely genius.

[00:00:19]We'll get into all the latest there, plus some interesting data as always.

[00:00:23]But first, I'm Nick, and this is Saturday Morning Inspection.

[00:00:33]>> [music] >> One of the reasons we cover the Kansas City Chiefs so much on this channel is that they're really smart. They're very creative. They think outside the box, identify market weaknesses, make solid personnel decisions, and frankly, they're really good. We like the smart, good, and interesting, and the Chiefs select all of those boxes. And this recent extension of Patrick Mahomes, his new deal, as I'm sure many of you Chiefs fans are very well aware of at this point, got a lot of headlines and a lot of buzz in terms of the size of the contract, longevity, and things like that. But people, I don't believe, truly understand how smart this was from the Chiefs perspective. So, let me pull up this uh post right here on X, and then we'll get into the statistics on the other side.

[00:01:11]Uh Spotrac reports Patrick Mahomes' renegotiation has him lapping the field in terms of practical remaining salary, while more than a few notable quarterbacks, bro, Jackson Prescott, are nearing the end of their financial stability. And he has laid out in front of you on the screen there a nice little table talking about the years remaining, the dollars remaining, and the practical guarantee, along with the practical years. And you'll notice very that there is a massive delta between Patrick Mahomes' deal with the Kansas City Chiefs and how other contracts are structured. For example, Josh Allen recently got a new deal as well, eight years remaining, three fewer than Patrick Mahomes, and significantly fewer dollars. What the Chiefs have done here is by locking Patrick Mahomes down, they have extended their dynastic window.

[00:01:51]They're thinking outside the box at a level many people don't understand.

[00:01:55]There's this belief that you need to sign players, if it's an extension to four or five-year deals. That's just the narrative. That's just the way things have always been done. Anyone who works for a big business understands that that is the death sentence for any organization. Why are you guys doing this? Well, it's just the way things are always done. Well, that's not good. No one asked, is it smart? Is it creative?

[00:02:13]Is it the right way to do things? And if you look at the contract structures here, four and five-year extensions like we saw with Josh Allen, like we've seen in pretty much every single deal. Why is that the situation? Well, that's cuz the way it's always done. That's just the way it is. But in reality, it's not smart. If you have your franchise quarterback, if you think he's special, if he's elite like Mahomes is, like frankly Josh Allen is, like a lot of these quarterbacks are, why wouldn't you extend them to a six, seven, eight-year deal?

[00:02:39]You got quarterbacks that are playing into their 40s and playing at a high level. Tom Brady, for example. Aaron Rodgers has fallen off a little bit, but he can still get it done. Matthew Stafford's almost 40 and the Rams are Super Bowl favorites, at least coming out of the NFC.

[00:02:51]Why not use massive contract extensions to give you a lot of cap flexibility?

[00:02:55]Think outside the box, guys. I know the length of the deal is historically unprecedented, but that's what makes it so smart. And this is why Brett Veach and the entire Chiefs organization deserves a ton of credit. They understand correctly that Mahomes and keeping him with a lot of cap flexibility and on the books for a next decade makes the Chiefs true championship contenders. And let me pull up this graphic here to kind of highlight that exact point. So, this is what I call the 27 to win metric. So, I always say to win a championship in the NFL, bare minimum, you need three things on a scale of one to 10 that add up to at least 27. Front office quality, your coach quality, and that includes the staff, and your quarterback quality. So, we have right here three contending AFC teams, the Buffalo Bills, the Baltimore Ravens, the Cincinnati Bengals, and the Kansas City Chiefs. So, on a scale of one to 10, I ranked each team by front office, by coach, which again includes the coaching staff, and the quality of the quarterback. And you will notice here very quickly that the Looking at the graphic, it's pretty obvious that red line is the 27 mark. Only one team the Kansas City Chiefs are beyond that red line. Look at what the Bills have.

[00:03:58]Great quarterback Josh Allen for sure.

[00:04:00]Coach solid. They did change in this off season. Want to see what happens there.

[00:04:03]Mediocre front office well short. They haven't won a Super Bowl. The Baltimore Ravens. Great example. Great quarterback.

[00:04:09]Really good front office. Questions about the coach. They changed the coach.

[00:04:11]Harbaugh had questions at the end as well. Didn't win a Super Bowl. The the Cincinnati Bengals. Great quarterback obviously Joe Burrow. Questions with the front office and the coach. Haven't won the Super Bowl. The Kansas City Chiefs.

[00:04:22]Really good coach. Really good front office. Fantastic quarterback. They exceeded the 27 win line. They won the Super Bowl. If you look at other Super Bowl winners this metric remains supreme. You look at the Seattle Seahawks last year. Quarterback Sam Darnold okay not special but great front office great coaching staff. They hit that 27 mark. They win the Super Bowl.

[00:04:39]The Rams in 2021 check a lot of boxes.

[00:04:42]Coach, quarterback, front office. And the Philadelphia Eagles. Solid quarterback. Really good coaching staff.

[00:04:48]Sirianni maybe not the best but Vic Fangio as a defensive coordinator, Kellen Moore as an offensive coordinator. Fantastic staff. Best O line coach in the game in my opinion in Stoutland. And then a really great front office. One of the best front offices in football. They get to 27. They win a Super Bowl. And you can see the Chiefs score there as well. So obviously this makes sense, right? This shouldn't be a surprise to anybody. But how does this correlate to the Chiefs decision? Here's why. Because Andy Reid may not be around forever as the Chiefs head coach.

[00:05:14]There may be a time in the next year, two, three, or eight where Andy Reid retires. In fact, that's probably the base case. I think we can all agree as much as we want Big Red to stay coaching and I'm not a fan of the Kansas City Chiefs. I love watching the Chiefs just cuz they're fantastic and like I said they're fun and smart. But the reality is with the Kansas City Chiefs Andy Reid's probably gone within the next three to four years, right?

[00:05:34]Realistically he's not longer than that but realistically that's when he'll leave when he'll retire. Could be this year.

[00:05:40]Right? He could be getting close. So there's a very good chance that coach score for the Kansas City Chiefs drops.

[00:05:46]And it drops significantly, right?

[00:05:48]Because Andy Reid's one of the all-time great coaches. So, if you're the Kansas City Chiefs, if you're Brett Veach, if you're the front office, if you're the uh the organization as a whole, and you see that like if our coaching staff gets weaker cuz Andy Reid retires, then we may not be a championship contender anymore. The one thing you can do to mitigate that risk is to extend Mahomes for a decade or eight years, which is technically what they did. What that means is that the Chiefs will get 10 points out of the quarterback score on the books for the next seven and eight years. That's a done deal. They do not have to worry about anything else in terms of the quarterback position. That box is checked. That means the front office knows for the next decade they have everything they need at quarterback. So, they do not need to go out and make a bold gamble on their next head coach.

[00:06:30]They don't need to go out and try and find the next genius that no one's ever heard of and hope he works out and and risk him being a bust. They can go out and get a solid coach. They can go out and get a pretty good coach and he can extend the dynastic run under Patrick Mahomes. There's historical precedent for this. I'll give you a great one, the 49ers after Bill Walsh. They had Joe Montana, they had a great front office, a great infrastructure. Walsh retires, they actually won two more Super Bowls and one of the one of the and were one of the best teams in football for the better part of a decade after that fact.

[00:07:00]How did they get there? It's because Seifert was the caretaker. They had Montana, later Steve Young. So, quarterback 10 out of 10, front office 10 out of 10, coaching staff probably seven out of 10, but that was still enough to hit the 27 to win mark. That's why the move to extend Patrick Mahomes was pure genius. What it it has allowed the Chiefs to do is to find a caretaker or a solid coach to replace Andy Reid, which keeps the Chiefs firmly in dynastic position for the next decade.

[00:07:27]This is why I'm very confused as the teams like the Bengals, like the Bills that don't extend Joe Burrow and Josh Allen to these mega deals. To go back to this chart. I mean, Josh Allen's got five years total remaining. Joe Burrow's got a little bit less. Uh you You see him at four years, about halfway down the chart there. The Ravens two.

[00:07:43]If I was one of these franchises, I would extend these guys to an eight-year deal immediately. Because you want to make sure that you if you bring in a coach, you know as long as he's solid with that quarterback, you're going to have a chance to be great. You're going to have a chance to win a Super Bowl. We saw this with the Bucs.

[00:07:57]Bruce Arians, love him, good coach, not the best coach of all time. You give him a 10 out of 10 quarterback, Super Bowl caliber.

[00:08:04]That's the way this works, guys. That's the way this works.

[00:08:07]Aaron Rodgers with the Green Bay Packers.

[00:08:10]Right? Mike McCarthy comes into the picture after they're looking for a long-term head coach. Is Mike McCarthy a terrible coach? No, he's solid. He's fine. He's wins a Super Bowl with Aaron Rodgers. Why? Because Aaron Rodgers is 10 out of 10. If you have your quarterback locked up long-term on your team, a great one, all-time stuff, like Mahomes is, like I believe Josh Allen is, like I believe Josh Josh Bro uh Joe Burrow is, excuse me, then you can be just good enough at coach, as we showcase here with the 27-win graphic.

[00:08:37]The key is to get to that 27 score, and the Chiefs have basically got themselves halfway there by default, almost regardless of who their coach is for the next eight years by setting up Mahomes on this deal. They don't have to worry about negotiation. They don't have to worry about Mahomes leaving. They don't have to worry about any of that. This is why the Chiefs are leaps and bounds ahead of their competition, certainly in the AFC. They think two steps ahead.

[00:09:01]All right, Chiefs fans, we got a lot more to talk about today, but first I want to hear from you guys in the comment section below. Now that I've given you some of the context and the information behind the Mahomes extension, how would you rate this deal from the Chiefs' perspective? Would you give it an A+, which I think it is?

[00:09:14]Would you give it, you know, maybe a C+, wait and see? Or you're a big fan of the extension, you think it's or you don't like the extension, excuse me, you're not a big fan. You think it's a bad move, give it a D, give it an F, whatever it may be. Give us your grade of this Chiefs extension, now that I've given you some context, in the comment section below.

[00:09:28]But let's dive into this particular. So, overthecap.com has an interesting write-up. I wanted to wait till the end of the video before I dove into the super specifics, just cuz it could be a little boring to get things going here.

[00:09:38]But they wrote while this dramatic dramatically resets the market the Chiefs still remain in a great position as Mahomes once again agreed to a contract with a massive length that really puts the Chiefs in a strong spot over the long term.

[00:09:51]Mahomes has now done two contracts which really bucked the norms in terms of contract length giving the Chiefs control for 12 years. Back in 2020 it's still having to add an additional two more years on this contract rather than just tearing up the old one and replacing it with a with a $64 million per year contract. In essence the Chiefs like the last time are the market setters and can then pick and choose how to deal with Mahomes' cap and cash to stay in line with the market as it evolves. So very similarly this gives the a Chiefs front office a lot of wiggle room which will allow them to perform better as a part of the 27 to win score.

[00:10:25]It's all part of the plan guys. Mahomes' contract structure is pretty basic. Each year there's a $30 million roster bonus due in May which will be the first decision date for a Chiefs restructure.

[00:10:35]I'm assuming there is no trade and there is not to extend the trade window. The team has restructured at least $27 million each of the last four years for cap purposes. Each year the team opts to make the conversion they will lower the cap charge by $24 million and increase the next four years cap charge by $6 million a season. The team will then have options to consider any P5 salary to restructure which is in the first year will be $27 million and that basically grows by $2 million a year maxing out at a P5 of $39 million in the final contract year. So basically flexibility. That's all it talks about there a lot of flexibility baked into the deal because it's so long. This allows your front office to perform at a high level. Great stuff. The report continues that rolling salary increase is better than the Chiefs initial contract with Mahomes which really has was a two contracts in one type of contract that saw a salary fluctuate a bit. It led them to consistently having to move money forward. The slow steady increase should lessen that in the future even as this deal is surpassed.

[00:11:27]So again they they this is sort of a phase two of this approach. This is the evolution of the Chiefs. It's is I love talking about Kansas City cuz they're so smart. They keep evolving, two steps ahead of everybody else.

[00:11:37]Uh the contract utilizes the rolling guarantee structure that was already utilized by players like Mahomes in the past. Basically, the way it works is that every future year has a cash payment of $30 million that will be made to Mahomes if the Chiefs were to ever walk away. It is a very strong protection for a player, but it is not a complete block from release. Having the full salary vest early is much stronger protection when you are talking about salaries this high. There's also no real future injury guarantees. The Chiefs will avoid having to fund a good chunk of the guarantee each year by also delaying the vesting dates. So again, what's the conclusion? The Chiefs ahead of the curve.

[00:12:09]We know we talk about teams that zig where everyone else is zagging in the context of trying to find certain players and use certain strategies, but the Chiefs are heading down a whole new path. There's generally two sorts of structures when it comes to deals.

[00:12:21]Short-term or 4-to-5-year like short-term franchise tag, 1-year deal, things like that. Or 4-to-5-year big extensions. Those were the two paths.

[00:12:28]That Those were the two options. There was no other option. Brett Veach and the Kansas City Chiefs said, "We'll make a new one. We'll forge ahead. We'll be the pioneers cuz we know how to get it done." And the Chiefs got it done. And they did it with the right player. They didn't do it with, you know, a second-tier Pro Bowler or even a Chris Jones-type player. They did it with their quarterback, the most important and most expensive player on the team.

[00:12:48]So every element of this from the Chiefs' perspective was 100% A+ work by the front office. Once again, unprecedented genius move by Kansas City.