Reviewing Chiefs’ options with franchise-tagged LT Orlando Brown Jr.
The outlook surrounding contract talks with the Kansas City Chiefs and Orlando Brown Jr. has gone from optimistic to pessimistic in a matter of days. Here is where the problem lies — both sides feel as if they have a lot of leverage in the situation.
Orlando Brown Jr. feels like he has the leverage to “not do a deal for the sake of doing a deal.” He wants a contract that resets the market (reportedly with per-year averages of around $25 million) and makes him the highest-paid left tackle in the game. Why does he feel he has this leverage? He believes he’s worth it, but he also knows what the Chiefs gave up to get him (four picks, including a first-rounder, also receiving a second-rounder in return). He has gone on record saying that, it’s “not the year to go into the season with a backup left tackle.” He clearly feels that the slate of opponents for Kansas City (plus the fact that the team has a half-billion-dollar quarterback that needs protection) might work in his favor here.
The Chiefs feel like they have the leverage to wait to sign Brown Jr. to a long-term deal if necessary or even at all. The newest CBA made it very difficult for players to truly hold out into the season without effectively burning money. He can sit out of training camp by avoiding signing his franchise tag, but once they get into the regular season, he’d begin forfeiting that fully-guaranteed salary on the franchise tag.
With this deadlock in a battle of leverage, let’s take a look at all the options that the Chiefs currently have in their playbook:
Option 1: Keep Brown on the franchise tag
AP Photo/David Zalubowski
The front office knows that they can keep Brown Jr. on the tag this year ($16.6M) and tag him again next year at 120% of his first year’s salary ($19.9M). This option obviously has some risk to it as Brown Jr. has threatened a holdout into Week 1 of the 2022 NFL season, but they could look to call what appears to be a bluff and stick to their guns.
Should Brown actually sit out, the Chiefs have several options on the roster right now. Roderick Johnson, Geron Christian and even Joe Thuney all have some levels of success playing left tackle in the NFL. It might even hurt Brown Jr. and his future in Kansas City if he were to cede playing time to one of those three players.
In the long run, a year on the franchise tag might not be the worst thing for Brown Jr. here. If he improves on his performance from 2021, he might actually earn that market-setting left tackle contract that he’s looking for. Even if he puts together a season reminiscent of last year, he could see more in a long-term deal as the salary cap continues to rise annually.
Option 2: Long-term deal
AP Photo/Reed Hoffmann
An agreement on a long-term deal seems unlikely right now absent the two sides finding some common ground. The Chiefs maintain they want Brown to be their left tackle of the future and they have until Friday afternoon to make that happen.
Reports out of Brown Jr.’s camp say that the Chiefs are unwilling to pay him a contract in line with NFL left tackle money. Reports out of the Chiefs’ camp say that the team is unwilling to give him a deal that resets the left tackle market and makes him the highest-paid player at the position. The truth is probably somewhere in the middle.
The team already set his market in a certain way the moment they used the franchise tag on him, now they need to at least beat what he would be paid on the tag for the next two years. If a long-term deal is to be agreed upon, both sides will probably have to waver in some way. Our projections of a five-year, $105 million extension with $72 million guaranteed might be a good common ground in negotiations. Those numbers would put him behind San Francisco 49ers LT Trent Williams in terms of the total contract value, but put him ahead of Baltimore Ravens LT Ronnie Stanley in terms of per-year average and guaranteed money. Selling Brown Jr. (and his agent) on a deal that puts him in lockstep with the top players at the position is going to be key to a deal coming together before the deadline.
Option 3: Find a trade partner
Mark J. Rebilas-USA TODAY Sports
The Chiefs traded a franchise-tagged player as recently as the 2019 NFL offseason, sending OLB Dee Ford to the San Francisco 49ers in trade. That trade happened much earlier in the offseason when teams still had quite a bit of money to work with.
With just three days remaining before the July 15 deadline for a long-term deal with franchise-tagged players, a tag-and-trade scenario for Brown Jr. would have to come together extremely quickly. This scenario seems highly unlikely, being that a team would have to dish out the trade capital and then sign Brown Jr. to a long-term extension (worth upwards of $25 million per year). It’s not impossible, but highly improbable that this option is anything more than a pipe dream for Kansas City (and Brown for that matter).
Option 4: Pull the tag
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This particular move wouldn’t be considered good business for Kansas City. If they were to pull the tag it’d free $16.6 million in salary-cap space (which they could’ve used earlier this offseason to make a move). This would also effectively make Brown Jr. a free agent. He could go out and sign with another team, but he likely wouldn’t get a long-term contract or anything close to even his one-year franchise-tag salary. The team would basically look at their draft capital investment in Brown Jr. as a sunk cost.
This move would potentially leave K.C. without a good option at left tackle. It’s one thing to have someone fill in for a game if Brown were to sit out, but to have someone start a full 17-game season? The positive is that this move would at least provide them with money to potentially go out and sign a stop-gap, plus go out and make some other moves too. Chiefs Super Bowl-winning LT Eric Fisher remains a free agent after spending last season with the Indianapolis Colts. He’s a year further removed from the Achilles injury that saw his departure from Kansas City.
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