As he watched rookie Patrick Mahomes develop behind starting quarterback Alex Smith in 2017, Kansas City Chiefs General Manager Brett Veach began to get the feeling he was going to have some difficult salary cap management in his future.
Veach and Matt Nagy, then Kansas City’s quarterbacks coach and now head coach of the Chicago Bears, were the first people in the Chiefs’ organization to think Mahomes should be Kansas City’s next quarterback. In 2016, Nagy would get his fellow assistant coaches to watch Texas Tech games featuring Mahomes, and Veach would send repeated video updates to head coach Andy Reid — to the point that it became too much. Eventually, however, Veach’s scouting reports won over Reid, and Kansas City traded up in the first round to draft Mahomes.
As a rookie, Mahomes sat for the team’s first 15 games, but when the quarterback played against Denver in the 2017 regular season finale, after a full season of shredding the Chiefs’ defense in practice, Veach knew not only that his and Nagy’s instincts were correct, but that he had to start thinking about building the roster around a future second contract for Mahomes that could cost more than $40 million per year.
Advertisement
“I think any time you draft a quarterback, your intentions are to eventually sign him to a long-term deal and hope and pray he’s a franchise quarterback,” Veach said. “We certainly got a glimpse of what he could do in that one start in Denver. We had seen a backlog of just tremendous development, and some of the stuff he did in training camp created the thought to have a great plan in place.”
That plan, which began in 2017 and culminated this offseason with a contract extension for Mahomes and the retention of several other key players, has the Super Bowl champion Chiefs in position to defend their title this season and for years to come. And for Veach, the lowest-paid GM in football, according to two people with knowledge of the situation, the work he did in keeping Kansas City’s core together is likely to change his own financial status in the near future.
After Mahomes was drafted, Reid did not rush his development, having him sit behind Smith during a year in which the veteran led the Chiefs back to the playoffs. But even while Mahomes was a backup, his ability stood out.
Advertisement
“He would just completely eviscerate our number one defense in practice, and he did so easily,” Veach said. “It was like, ‘Oh, my God, this is like our third-team offense,’ and he played with such a carefree attitude back then that something was brewing.”
In Mahomes’s first NFL game, he led a comeback to beat the Broncos, 27-24. After the Chiefs, led by Smith, lost in the first round of the playoffs, the team traded Smith to Washington and began the process of building around Mahomes.
“Our whole intention that first free agency period in 2018 was to get as much talent as we could,” Veach said. “We knew we had a great tight end in Travis Kelce. We knew we had Tyreek Hill. That’s why we went out and got Sammy Watkins. We just wanted to get as many weapons as we could. But as soon as we were three or four games into the 2018 campaign, we’re thinking he’s going to be the MVP.”
Fifty Mahomes touchdown passes later, Veach was right, and the Chiefs came within a game of the Super Bowl. That led to a pivotal offseason, when Veach had to balance filling short-term needs — especially on defense — and positioning the Chiefs to handle Mahomes’s eventual contract extension.
Advertisement
“We need a defense to complement this offense, because this kid is the best player in the league,” Veach said of his thinking during the 2019 offseason. “Our offense is always going to score points, and we have to be good enough on defense to win a Super Bowl. We knew we had the offense that we had last year, but the defense wasn’t good enough.’’
Veach’s first big moves were trading outside linebacker Dee Ford to the San Francisco 49ers for a second-round draft pick and cutting outside linebacker Justin Houston. To many on the outside, the moves were curious for a team trying to improve on defense. Ford and Houston were effective edge rushers, but Veach needed to free up some money, and neither was an ideal fit for the new 4-3 defense under coordinator Steve Spagnuolo.
That left a void at edge rusher, and Veach began studying then-Seattle Seahawks defensive end Frank Clark. He had been impressed by Clark’s college play at Michigan and the way Pete Carroll had developed him in Seattle. Clark, like Ford, was under the franchise tag.
Advertisement
“We knew it was going to cost, but we’re thinking, ‘How can we mitigate that cost?’” Veach said. “We made the [Ford] trade with the 49ers so we had the extra second-round choice. If we had to give up a one or a two, we’re going to get something back.”
Veach got a Pro Bowl pass-rusher in Clark, 27, at a young age. Then the Chiefs further helped the defense by signing safety Tyrann Mathieu to a three-year, $42 million contract and drafting safety Juan Thornhill, who excelled before suffering a season-ending injury. The result was a much-improved defense that was capable enough, when combined with Mahomes and the high-powered offense, for the Chiefs to win the Super Bowl.
But as the 2020 offseason began, there was plenty of work to be done. The novel coronavirus pandemic, which is expected to have a major revenue impact on the NFL because stadiums will be without fans or only partially filled this year, threatened to lower the salary cap in 2021 and perhaps 2022. For the Chiefs, knowing they had to pay Mahomes, that meant they might end up losing some of their core players.
Advertisement
But where Veach was fortunate is Mahomes understood he could help himself by being flexible with his contract demands.
“He didn’t want his contract to be outdated, but at the same time he was cognizant that we have a lot of good players,” Veach said. “To be successful in this league ... you have to be flexible and creative with your cap space, so he was open to be flexible.”
The Chiefs gave Mahomes guarantees that kick in two and three years ahead. In doing so, they were able to lock him up for a total of 12 years, adding 10 years to the final two years of his rookie contract. But the main thing that got the deal done was Mahomes not getting a raise for the first two years. He was scheduled to make $27.2 million in 2020 and 2021, and that’s what he makes under the new deal. His cap numbers also stayed about the same.
Advertisement
“If you look at the contract, the first five years average out to about $40 million a year, so we get what we want,” Veach said. “Then in the second half of the contract, it’s like $50 million a year.”
By keeping Mahomes’s cap number the same the next two years, Veach was able to lock up Chris Jones, one of the league’s best interior pass rushers, with a four-year, $80 million deal. Jones gets the $16.1 million he was scheduled to make as a franchise player this year and $21.5 million next year. That flexibility left Veach with enough room to sign Kelce to a four-year, $57.25 million contract.
The Chiefs now have core contributors Mathieu, Eric Fisher and Mitchell Schwartz signed through 2021; Hill and Mecole Hardman through 2022; and Mahomes, Jones, Kelce and Clyde Edwards-Helaire longer than that.
Advertisement
Mahomes’s decision mirrors one Tom Brady made early in the 2010s, when he took less money to allow the New England Patriots to keep the roster that surrounded him at a Super Bowl level. That, along with some careful planning and creative execution by Veach, puts the Chiefs in position to compete for another championship this season — and to potentially replace the Patriots as the NFL’s next dynasty.
Read more from John Clayton:
During unprecedented NFL offseason, the Patriots had a roster overhaul like no other
The Colts’ offseason changed as soon as they found out Philip Rivers was available
The Chargers needed a strong offseason to keep up in the AFC West. They got one.
ncG1vNJzZmivp6x7uK3SoaCnn6Sku7G70q1lnKedZMCxu9GtqmhqYGd9cHyXaGluZ5Odtqay0mapqKukmr9urtGeq61lppqupLSMqZitqpmYuG65wKGmpp2jZA%3D%3D