If I were Brett Veach, Part 1: Salary cap games, cash vs cap, and Clark Hunt's spending
Turning the page to the 2025 season by looking at the Chiefs' cap situation, how it can be manipulated, and why cash spending matters.
It’s that time of year.
Every offseason, for the last… I don’t know how many years, I write one of my favorite series of articles. It’s where we take a step back from the minutia of game-by-game film and look at the team from 30,000 feet in the air.
That’s right, it’s time for “If I were Brett Veach!”
(holds for applause)
For those new to the site, the basic idea is that following the end of a full season, I place myself in the shoes of the Chiefs’ general manager and make a plan for the offseason. It’s something I do every year, and I have a great deal of fun with it. I break it down into each “section” of what the offseason entails, from working with the cap all the way through post-draft free agency signings, to everything in between.
We’ll start today with Part 1, looking at some salary cap moves the Chiefs could make to have a little more freedom to be spenders this offseason. Additionally, I want to have a conversation about the idea of cash spending vs cap spending on a general level, as well as talk about how Kansas City COULD be more aggressive in that area if they chose to be. After this piece, we’ll dive into in-house free agents and who I would keep if I were Veach (at what general price, which is always a consideration for free agents).
It’s always a great deal of fun to talk about ways the team can move and improve heading into the next season (with an eye towards the future), and as I talked about last week when discussing the 2025 draft, this particular offseason presents something of a pivot point for the Chiefs. What they do this offseason will play a crucial role in whether they maintain their status as Super Bowl favorites (with Mahomes and Reid they’ll always at least be contenders) or whether they’ll face more of an uphill climb in the coming years.
In order to do so, they’ll need to be able to address some weak spots on the roster. And one of the best ways to do that in a targeted fashion is free agency. But to be active in free agency… you need both cash and cap.
What’s the difference? Hey, I’m glad you asked!
Everyone who reads this newsletter knows what the salary cap is; It’s amount teams are allowed to spend on contracts in a given year. This year, that amount is $279.2 million, up nearly $24 million from last year. We’ll return to that rising number momentarily, after we finish defining our terms.
The amount that a player’s contract counts against the cap depends on a number of things, mostly related to bonuses (signing bonuses, roster bonuses, etc). The reason for this is that certain bonuses (like a signing bonus) are allowed to be “spread out” in terms of cap hit. An additional weapon teams can use to manipulate the cap are “void years,” in which the contract is no longer in place to keep the player around BUT some of the money from the contract counts against the salary cap. This is all a massive oversimplification to say that a 5 year, $100 million dollar contract can hit the salary cap in any number of ways over those 5 years (or perhaps longer if there are void years) depending on structure (bonuses, void years, base salary, etc).
(I’m leaving out guaranteed vs guaranteed money here for purpose of space and because I’m guessing most of you understand the difference, but here’s a good explanation that delves into that briefly)
People talk about the salary cap all the time. Over the Cap (whose cap calculator is one of my favorite tools to try out various scenarios) and Spotrac are two sites that do an excellent job keeping track of player (and team) numbers in this area. We all know that a team that has lots of space against the cap has more room to sign free agents and improve their team (as well as keep current players with extensions). There’s a finite amount of cap space, and so a team can only sign a finite amount of players. simple, right?
Well, sort of, because the MUCH less often talked about factor (but even more real for teams) is the issue of cash spending. Because of all the bonuses involved in NFL contracts (and they way they can be spread out over the years), what a team “spends” against the cap may be very different than how much actual cash (as in, the check that gets cut) the team (owner) spends.
One of the best, and simplest explanations I’ve ever seen for salary cap vs cash spending was on Reddit:
Cap value = how much a player costs against the cap in a given year.
Cash = the actual dollar amount the player will receive in a given year.
If Cash > Cap in a given year, it's because the player was paid a bonus that has the cap hit spread out over multiple years.
If Cap > Cash, it's because the player was paid a bonus in a prior year, and the team is dealing with the cap ramifications from that.
This is overly simple, but actually pretty comprehensive. Basically, every season you’ve got a league-set limit on salary cap value that can be used… and an actual cash amount that is NOT limited by the league.
Why does that matter? Because, when combined with the way the NFL’s salary cap has skyrocketed (and will continue to do so), it allows owners who are aggressive in cash spending to manipulate the salary cap more than owners who are NOT aggressive in cash spending.