Future uncertain; Sifting through the Chiefs trading away Tyreek Hill
Looking at where things stand now for Kansas City from a teambuilding perspective and a path that has never had more options and less certainty.
Tyreek Hill has been traded to the Miami Dolphins. It feels (a few hours later as I write this) utterly strange to write.
By now, you’ve read multiple instant reaction pieces and know generally what went down. Hill and the Chiefs couldn’t come to an agreement on an extension, and Miami was waiting with open arms to give Hill the richest wide receiver contract in NFL history as well as send a haul of picks (we’ll talk about the nature of that haul in a moment) to Kansas City.
Here are the basics… The Chiefs get the 29th and 50th pick as well as a 4th round pick in 2022 (the upcoming draft), as well as a 4th and a 6th round pick in the 2023 draft. The Dolphins get Hill, and immediately gave him a contract that puts him at the top of wide receiver money by a healthy amount.
But you all knew the “what.” Let’s talk about the “what now.”
Because like it or not (I don’t like it, but opinions on that seem to vary depending on who is analyzing the situation, which we’ll address shortly), this is what has happened. The Chiefs are now, quite suddenly, without one of the most gifted and impactful offensive weapons in the NFL, who has a strong argument as a top 3 receiver and has been one of the most important pieces of the most successful runs in franchise history. They went from being set on offense to having a massive hole at the wide receiver position.
The Chiefs are also in a vastly different position than what they were in just yesterday in terms of the salary cap and draft capital. It is, without exaggerating, a trade that has flipped the entirety of the teambuilding strategy on its head.
So as I said, we’re here mostly to talk about the “what now.” So let’s talk briefly about the trade and the return itself. Then we’ll start the process of figuring out where things are going to go from here, and why this offseason has suddenly become the most crucial of Brett Veach’s life.
(Before I get started, I do want to say that Tyreek Hill has been a huge part of some the best memories I and my kids have regarding the Chiefs. He’s been an unbelievably great player, and it feels weird to just move on immediately to the fallout without acknowledging and thanking Hill, even if he’ll never see it, for being such a great player. We’ll always have Wasp, and I’m glad he was a Chief for the last 6 seasons)