Despite a slow start to his season, and more uncharacteristic mistakes than you typically associate with Travis Kelce, he was still able to turn it on when it mattered most and was a big factor in the team reaching and winning yet another Super Bowl. Kelce caught 125 passes through the postseason and remained virtually impossible to stop.
NFL franchise tag winners, losers: Who made out best at deadline? | USA Today
TBD
Kansas City Chiefs
They control Sneed’s fate for now, though have empowered the ascending cover man to seek a trade. All-Pro DT Chris Jones seems committed to remaining in K.C. with the league’s newest dynasty … but 31 other teams could soon have the opportunity to float a massive enough bag to change his mind.
2024 NFL franchise tag predictions: Brian Burns traded; Michael Pittman, Tee Higgins have different futures | CBS Sports
L’Jarius Sneed, CB, Kansas City Chiefs
Tag price: $19.8 million
Kansas City has always been pretty active when it comes to trading with the tag (see: Frank Clark), and they’re putting the vibe out with Sneed. Leger Douzable and I talked about Sneed on the “Pick Six NFL” podcast on Tuesday and how it makes total sense for him to come back and try to win three titles in a row. Every player who has two with the Chiefs already should be doing it. Having said that … Sneed is 27, he was a fourth-round pick, he’s playing the best football of his career and he should bank a massive deal if he can. The Chiefs told him to seek a trade, and I expect his agents to find someone who will give him somewhere in the range of $40 million guaranteed on the low end. He was outstanding this year. The only impediment is the Chiefs seeing the salary cap bump and thinking they can run it back this year.
Prediction: Tag and trade
Describing Every NFL Team’s Top Offseason Priority in 1 Sentence | Bleacher Report
Kansas City Chiefs: Find a way (playing off emotions?) to get discounts for Chris Jones and/or L’Jarius Sneed, but keep both because the defense has become the key in K.C.
Ideal Landing Spots for the Stars of the 2024 NFL Scouting Combine | Bleacher Report
WR Brian Thomas Jr., LSU
Ideal Landing Spots: Cincinnati Bengals, Kansas City Chiefs, Buffalo Bills
Xavier Worthy made headlines for his record-breaking 4.21-second 40-yard dash, but Brian Thomas Jr. ran only 0.12 seconds slower (4.33) while coming in at 6’3” and 209 pounds. Thomas registered a relative athletic score of 9.97 at the combine, the 10th-highest among receivers since 1987, per Kent Lee Platte of Pro Football Network.
Thomas’ game at LSU was built on speed. His testing times confirmed that he is an elite athlete with a prototypical frame for an outside deep threat. Thomas can also work from the slot, so he isn’t just a one-trick pony.
He does need to develop a more complex route tree. However, as B/R scout Derrik Klassen noted in his scouting report, “it’s hard to find players with his size, speed and instant burst.”
2024 NFL Mock Draft: Trades shake up Round 1; QBs, WRs dominate early | The Athletic
32. Kansas City Chiefs: Xavier Worthy, WR, Texas
Oh sure, the fastest man in combine history falls to the back-to-back Super Bowl champs. Worthy will be a really interesting test case, because the speed is special and it shows up on tape, but he was 165 pounds at the combine — and that number will scare off some teams. However, if he lasts all the way to pick No. 32, Red Raiders (like QB Patrick Mahomes) and Longhorns will learn to get along in Kansas City.
Charles Davis 2024 NFL mock draft 1.0: Giants turn to J.J. McCarthy as successor to Daniel Jones | NFL.com
32 – Kansas City Chiefs
Xavier Worthy
Texas · WR · Junior
You didn’t think I would bypass the new NFL Scouting Combine 40-yard dash record-holder, did you? Patrick Mahomes has helped Kansas City win back-to-back Super Bowl titles playing “small ball,” but this infusion of speed will have No. 15 looking to throw deep again. Worthy will open up the field more for transcendent TE Travis Kelce, too.
Around the NFL
NFL’s worst free agent signings of all time: Former teammates Antonio Brown, Le’Veon Bell headline top 10 list | CBS Sports
6. CB J.C. Jackson (Chargers): 2022
Jackson signed a whopping five-year, $82.5 million deal a year after picking off a career-high eight passes with the Patriots in 2021. Injuries, however, limited him to just five games during his first season in Los Angeles.
Jackson played in just two games for the Chargers in 2023 before he was traded back to New England in exchange for a 2025 sixth-round pick. New England released him earlier this month.
Patriots using $13.8M transition tag on Kyle Dugger | ESPN
The transition tag is for $13.8 million, which is the average of the top 10 salaries for safeties. Only five other players had received the transition tag in the past 15 years, according to ESPN Stats & Information, with none of them being safeties.
Dugger can still sign an offer sheet with another team, and the Patriots would have an opportunity to match the offer. If the Patriots decline to match any offer, they would not receive any draft-pick compensation.
In case you missed it on Arrowhead Pride
Tyreek Hill says Patrick Mahomes is the NFL’s best quarterback: ‘He’s a different dude’
Naturally, the former Kansas City player was asked which quarterback he’d pick as the league’s best. Without hesitation, Hill said that it was the Chiefs’ Patrick Mahomes, whom he described as “obviously the best quarterback in the league.”
Without prompting, Hill knew he would have to walk back a statement he made during the first episode of his “It Needed To Be Said” podcast in the summer of 2022: that Miami’s Tua Tagovailoa was a more accurate passer than Mahomes.
“Obviously, like I’m gonna go with [Mahomes] as the strongest arm,” Hill had said at the time, “but as far as accuracy-wise, I’m going with Tua all day. I want it to hit me right in the breadbasket, just like I did in the Buffalo Bills game and take it 70.”
So on “The Pivot,” Hill referenced his previous statement — and added that Tagovailoa had even grown as a quarterback.
“This year, for Tua, is like a build-on season,” explained Hill, “because this is obviously [the] best season of his career. So we’re gonna go from accurate to being that, fearless, cocky — well, not really cocky, but he’s going to continue to add on to his game, you feel me? Because he’s got the skillset — and he’s got the supporting cast to do it, with all the weapons that he’s got around him.”
