Chiefs Will Resume Extension Talks With This Key Cornerback
· Yahoo Sports
The Kansas City Chiefs have a lot of churn and potential turnover going on with their secondary, and slot corner Trent McDuffie is right in the middle of the action. The Chiefs tried to reach an agreement on an extension last season before week one, according to a report by Sam Robinson of ProFootballRumors.com, and now they’ll give it another go to try and lock up McDuffie as he heads into the fifth and final year of his rookie contract.
McDuffie could get a market-setting contract this offseason, so it won’t be easy. Safety Bryan Cook and cornerback Jaylen Watson are also heading into free agency, and the consensus is that the Chiefs won’t be able to keep all three.
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“We had a lot of dialogue with Trent last spring, last summer. He’s first out of the gate,” Chiefs GM Brett Veach said, via Fox4's Jared Bush. “Looking forward to get with him and obviously Trent’s a great player. We’d certainly love to have Trent back for the long term.”
The Chiefs typically don’t pay cornerbacks. They’re good at developing them, and they’ve already extended McDuffie through this coming season by exercising his fifth-year option. But McDuffie wants to be paid, and he’s got some accolades to justify it. He’s a two-time All-Pro, the Chiefs got a discount on that option because he had no original-ballot Pro Bowl honors, according to Robinson.
Kansas City is currently in the middle of its process to create more cap space. Quarterback Patrick Mahomes was recently extended, but that still left the Chiefs $3 million over the cap. This week the Chiefs released defensive end Michael Danna, who was scheduled to receiver $9 million this season, so the team gleaned more savings there.
The big domino in the cap-space reduction process is defensive tackle Chris Jones, who underperformed so badly last year that he joked about “taking a year off.” The tone and tenor of extension talks with Jones are something to watch as the Chiefs try to figure out who’s staying and who’s going in the secondary.
The good news about this problem is that the Chiefs have a lot of talent in this positional group, which speaks well to their development process. Cook and Watson are among the most highly-rated players in this offseason’s free agent list, and there are players waiting in the wings if the Chiefs decide that McDuffie’s asking price is too high.