Everyone will focus on Von Miller, Malik Jackson, and the Denver Broncos key free agents this offseason, but another AFC West playoff team, the Kansas City Chiefs, has plenty of big-name players set to hit the open market in March.
For Kansas City Chiefs GM John Dorsey, who has proven that he’s one of the best in the business, the clear priority is to keep Eric Berry around. Berry showed that he, not Earl Thomas or Devin McCourty, is the NFL’s best safety, as he’s elite both in the box, in deep coverage, and against running backs and tight ends. However, he isn’t the only impressive defensive back on the Chiefs, since veteran cornerback Sean Smith and rookie Marcus Peters formed one of the league’s best CB duos in 2015.
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Peters’s Defensive Rookie of the Year season and emergence as one of the finest playmakers in the NFL could decrease Smith’s value to the Chiefs, but I don’t think that’s the case at all. In fact, I think Smith is the one who increases Peters’s value and effectiveness, because, as Pro Football Focus’s Sam Monson noted, the first-round pick was prone to negative plays in his first season.
The play-to-play rockiness from Peters can be expected, and it’s something that will iron out over time. Peters’s coverage skills, physicality, and elite ball skills make him one of the league’s most promising players, and he should become the Chiefs best corner sooner than rather than later.
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But since it’s important to evaluate corners based on how consistent they are game-to-game, Smith may have been even more important to the Chiefs last season. Remember, when he was suspended for the first three games of the season, Kansas City’s pass defense allowed 298, 238, and 325 passing yards. For the season, the Chiefs gave up just 231 passing yards per game, good for ninth-best in the NFL.
A sample-size of three games is hardly enough to draw any hard conclusions from, but it’s simply logical to expect the Chiefs pass defense to regress when the excellent Smith-Peters duo becomes a Peters-Phillip Gaines duo.
Gaines and Steven Nelson, who will head into his second season, are both talented young corners, but it would be risky for the Chiefs to expect them to become starting-caliber players next to Peters, especially since both players took some lumps in 2015.
The Chiefs will have to pay Berry what he wants, as he’s too critical to their success to let go. With Derrick Johnson, Tamba Hali, and Jaye Howard also set to hit free agency, the Chiefs will have to cut corners somewhere. They have enough cap space to keep several of those players, but there’s no way they keep all of them.
Someone will have to be sacrificed to the free agent pool, and I don’t think it would be in the Chiefs best interests to make Smith one of the odd-men out. It’s true that he will be 29 when the season starts and is a candidate to be overpaid, but the Chiefs have something special going, thanks for their defense.
More specifically, their playoff success is due to their pass defense, and while that centers around the OLB duo of Justin Houston and Hali, there’s more to it than just that. They were third in the NFL in scoring defense, fourth in net yard per attempt allowed, and second in interceptions, picking off 22 passes as compared to just 25 touchdowns allowed.
Having Berry and an excellent CB duo in front of their talented group of safeties allows them to make plays and limit QBs on a per-pass basis.
In this league, having depth and talent at corner is critical, and the Chiefs can allow their special secondary to carry them, especially since Jamaal Charles will be back in the fold in 2016, and, hopefully, the pass-catchers around Alex Smith will be even more effective.
Smith signed a three-year, $16.5 million deal with the Chiefs back in 2013, and that has proven to be a bargain, since he’s arguably been a top-ten corner in that time span after being a talented-but-high-variance player for the Miami Dolphins.
There’s no questioning Smith’s credentials at this point, but since he’s coming off of four straight seasons with at least 12 passes defended, he could look for one final payday.
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That said, Smith’s age works in the Chiefs favor, because while it is a deterrent to other teams’ willingness to give him a big contract on the open market, his value to Kansas City remains unchanged. Their window is not necessarily a long-term one with Jamaal Charles currently 29 and Alex Smith at the helm.
Make no mistake, they have time to get that ring, but they need to do what they can to keep their core together. Given how important the pass defense has been, Smith is a part of that core, and letting him go should only be an option if he decides he is dead-set on testing the free agent waters.