The final chapters of this trade haven't been written. What do we get in FA for $19.8m and what do we do with these picks.

In what world is a 3 totally valueless?

It’s not what we wanted, but it’s still a damn 3.

For starters, it’s not a 3rd. It’s a 4th because of how picks in future years are valued.

And yes, because you can move the money around to make it work and create 19.8mm elsewhere. That has implications for future seasons and future decisions, sure. But this does as well.

And yeah, if he leaves next year and we get nothing, we at least have a real possibility of a compensatory pick. Because next offseason we’re very likely to lose some high value player otherwise in Bolton, Creed, or Smith which would make us more likely to actually realize the compensatory third.

IT will be fun rooting against the Titans this year

Absolutely a home run for a fourth round pick.

But if you are going to win multiple SB's with Mahome's salary, you do need to maximize your good picks to make up for your MEH and Skyy picks.

I don’t think the future 3 = a 4 process works with Kansas City.

Maybe for franchises that where the GM and coach are fighting for their jobs, who need to win this year just to remain with the franchise.

But Veach and Andy know they’re gonna be here in 2025. So whether they decide to keep the pick and have two 3s next year or they elect to use it this year in a trade up, it’s the same value IMO.

I hope they can do it.

Absolutely. But tell me which constellation of remaining FAs we’d sign that would be very satisfying.

It’ll be a hodgepodge no doubt, and the end result could end up better. But nothing is going to feel great in my view.

Maybe, but that's a pick we would get in 2025 and would be the equivalent of 5.

If you want a dynasty like the patriots you e got to leave the feelings behind. This is the foreseeable future for a franchise that’s window is always open. Reload and recycle. I think we got lucky early with the run it back tour. Lessons were learned there. Rosters require non stop maintenance and upgrading. Unfortunately sometimes a tyreek hill and ljarious sneed are the cost.

Securing the services — insurance policies perhaps you’d day — of Mike Danna, Donovan Smith, and some WR 3/4 type would feel good for me.

Then everything in the draft is basically just strengthening what you had last year.

Pure garbage. Maybe move up 4 slots with it ROFL

Who said they have to move up?

They could just keep the pick and it turn into pick 70-75 next year. That isn’t nothing. At all.

Yeah, I don’t buy that. It creates a complete hole on your roster for the upcoming season because you don’t have the pick to replace the player. And if you want to turn around and immediately trade one of those future picks, the rest of the league devalues the pick.

They are paying for a 27 year old cornerback with bad knees. Chiefs robbed them.

They could also hold it till it appreciates back into a legit 3. Then it will be viewed as stellar ammo for team building toward the 4-peat.


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Exactly. Better said.

I agree, but that hodgepodge is a necessary. Sure we could have pushed out some cap, but that isn't wise, even if you are going to a 3-peat. I think with our depth we will be fine, particularly with the offense being better and we are in much better shape for next years decisions.

It’s not all about 2024, though.

We all wanna three-peat badly but the Chiefs were never gonna go “all in”. Veach knows that if he spreads his resources out they can win at a level we’ve never seen before over Mahomes’ 15+ year career, nor will ever see again.

You can value it as a 4th for the sake of a trade/discussion, but when/if that's a top 75 pick next year, it's going to be what it is.

And I’m fully confident this is what they’re going to end up doing with it. The alternative is keeping Sneed, moving money around with Thuney or Taylor, and bringing back Danna and Smith and prioritizing WR in round 1 or 2 of the draft. I would’ve rather gone in that direction.

Which would’ve been a fine solution if they ever were OK paying Sneed $20m — which I think we now recognize they were never gonna do.

So taking the picks is a solid outcome given that he was never gonna be on our roster.

If TENN doesn’t step up to the plate, I’m not certain we don’t rescind the tag.

Rams got a late 3 for Ramsey. Bucs got a late 3 for Davis. Packers got a late 3 for Douglas. Chiefs will get a better 3rd than all those teams got.

The Titans will be a mid 3 at worst. In fact odds are it could be a top 10 pick considering their schedule and the other 3 teams in their division all had winning records last year.

Based on the Chiefs recent draft position that draft pick could only be a mere 10-11 picks after where our 2nd would be.

With the talent depth at OT and WR, depending on how the 1st round goes, you might be able to stay put at 32 and get an OT you had valued there and try to move up from 64 to get a WR you value. The way the roster is now. LT has to be at the top of our list. WR is still a need, but realistically that is likely going to be the 4th receiving option the first year (Rice/Kelce and Brown).

Let’s take this to an extreme. Would you rather have a 1st this year in a trade or a 1st in 5 years? After all, Mahomes will be here in 5 years, and imagine having an extra first then. Because it’s going to be what it is.

I get why things can be a little different with the Chiefs. But they likely value deferred picks similar to other teams.

I think one thing you're overlooking is the possibility that this trade gives them the flexibility to move up for a LT or WR that maybe they feel they otherwise wouldn't have been able to pull off.

I absolutely think the Chiefs trade up in the 1st now, and it might've been the biggest reason, aside from the cap, for the them pulling the trigger on a trade.

We have to see the entire plan play out.

No its a 3rd. Assuming we keep the pick, KC will be picking a player in the 3rd round next year with that pick. Not the 4th round. I dont care what comparison values say, its literally a 3rd round pick. Potentially a high 3rd rounder.

And you have yet to explain how Veach could simply move money around to create $19.8MM this year. Explain exactly how to do that and how to do it without pushing the can down the road to where it hits us later.

Then you mention Creed, Smith, and Bolton who all need paid soon which actually shows we need the $ more than we needed the player.

And there is zero guarantee we get equivalent to a 3rd round compensatory pick next year.

We also still have a ton of roster holes to fill.

Its 1 player in a crowded room vs many players long term. Its that simple.

We have the players in house already. Good lord some of you forget Sneed missed good portions of many games in 2022 including most of the AFCCG last year and we won.

Yeah, we disagree. But that’s fine. Obviously it’s about moving money around that will hit us in future years, but that’s done all the time and it’s hardly mortgaging the future.

The guy was severely underpaid compared to his production for his career. Good for him getting a big contract. I wish him the best. He was certainly worth more to the Chiefs than a mid third rounder, but nothing you can do about it. Veach and the scouts will have to keep working their magic.

I edited this. I don’t recall him being hurt and missing plays because of his knees. but people are saying he did.

If its simply that easy then Veach would have done that if he wanted to keep Sneed for $19.8MM.

He didn't, so he clearly disagrees with you as well.

I’m not sure they’d rescind it just because it looks bad at this point in the process. But I agree we were never paying him that long term.

I think many of us will feel a little better about this whole situation if the Chiefs go up and get somebody like Troy Fautanu in the 1st round and fill a huge need using one of those 3 2025 day 2 selections.

Found this and wanted to share. Thought it was a pretty good breakdown/take on the trade:

Breaking down the many details of the Chiefs’ L’Jarius Sneed trade

Late on Friday night, the Kansas City Chiefs traded their franchise-tagged cornerback L’Jarius Sneed to the Tennessee Titans.

Let’s take a careful look at all of the trade’s details.

The seventh-round picks

Initial reporting said the Chiefs would trade Sneed for the Titans’ 2025 third-round pick and a swap of 2024 seventh-round picks. Late on Friday night, Sports Illustrated’s Albert Breer reported that Tennessee would give up the earliest of its three seventh-round picks (221) to get Kansas City’s only seventh-round selection (252).

So the Chiefs will have the first pick of the seventh round, rather than the sixth-to-last pick of the seventh. That’s almost a full round (31 spots) earlier.

What does that mean?

In 2023, Kansas City general manager Brett Veach used a seventh-rounder (250) to bring in cornerback Nic Jones. In 2022, he used the seventh round to select cornerback Jaylen Watson (243), running back Isiah Pacheco (251) and safety Nazeeh Johnson (259). In 2020, he took cornerback Thakarius “BoPete” Keyes (237). In 2019, he selected guard Nick Allegretti (216).

While both have shown promise, it’s just too soon to know If the picks for Jones and Johnson will work out. There’s no doubt, however, that Watson, Pacheco and Allegretti were hits. So of these six players, only Keyes was a miss — and all of them (save Allegretti) were taken later than the 221st pick.

The third-round pick

There’s always uncertainty about future draft picks; there’s no way to know where a team’s pick will fall a year from now. In 2024, the Titans are seventh in the draft order. In 2023, they were 11th. The year before that, they were 18th. In 2021, they chose 22nd —and in 2020, they picked 29th. Just by averaging their pick position over those five drafts, we could expect them to come in around 17th — which would be the 81st pick of the 2025 draft.

And honestly, that’s a reasonable expectation for the Titans. They have made a lot of moves to improve this season — but they will still have to get past the Houston Texans to win the AFC South. Houston has also taken some significant steps in the offseason — and their quarterback is CJ Stroud — not Will Levis.

Some will argue that the Chiefs could have received a third-round compensatory pick in 2025 by letting Sneed walk in free agency, rather than go through this tag-and-trade process. That’s true.

But we must remember that comp picks are not guaranteed. If Sneed had simply walked, the Chiefs would likely have made a splashy signing during free agency’s first wave — which by itself could have erased that opportunity. Even if the Chiefs had then done nothing else in the free-agent market, the 2025 comp pick could not have been earlier than the 97th selection — and depending on how Sneed performed in Tennessee (and what other teams did), it’s possible it could even have come somewhere around the 132nd pick after the fourth round.

So any way you slice it, this trade improved the best-case return for Sneed by something around 16 draft positions — and potentially by many more than that.

The trade value

In an X post on Saturday morning, number-crunching NFL analyst Kevin Cole made a worthwhile point.

It’s very hard to argue the team trading a player away got “fleeced” when they’re willing to trade the player to any of 31 teams with the highest bid.

Cole had it right. Sneed’s trade value isn’t what the Chiefs, Spotrac, sports talk-show hosts or Internet experts (including Cole and myself) think it is. Instead, his trade value is what 31 other teams will bid it up to be.

Yes... the Chiefs, local sports-talkers (and you and I) would have preferred to get a third-round pick this season rather than next season — if not an even higher pick in either season. But we can’t ignore what’s right here in front of us: Sneed simply wasn’t worth that much.

In part, this was because he was going to demand a large contract. His new four-year deal with the Titans is worth $76 million — including $55 million guaranteed. That’s $19 million in average annual value, which now makes Sneed the league’s sixth highest-paid corner. A contract like that will always reduce what another team is willing to give up in trade.

Sneed’s value was also affected by his injury history. After being held out of practice for the final weeks of training camp with knee inflammation, Sneed was listed on the team’s weekly injury report for all but two of 2023’s games. While he was a full participant in all of the team’s practices in 14 of those weeks, a 27-year-old player who is consistently receiving treatment for knee inflammation is going to raise concerns — and we now know the Titans were worried about it.

Why? Because the trade was originally reported to be contingent on a physical.

We can all agree that we hoped — or maybe even expected — the Chiefs would get more in this trade. But Sneed brought what the market would bear. In the end, a player taken with the 138th pick of the draft gave his team four solid seasons (including two where he was among the league’s best) before being traded for a pick that’s now likely to be 50 to 60 picks earlier — plus a gain of a full round in value on another selection. That’s a win.

The timing

Cole made one other point on Saturday morning.

Timing is the biggest issue for maximizing value. Post-FA and pre-draft is probably the worst.

He was right about this, too. The more time that elapsed, the less Sneed was likely to be worth. And opening almost $19 million in cap space would have been a lot more useful before free agency began, rather than after its biggest deals had already been made.

But according to another X post on Saturday morning — this one from The Athletic’s Dianna Russini — the Chiefs weren’t dragging their feet.


The afternoon of March 12 was the day before the league year officially began — and if you’ll remember, news first broke that Kansas City would be visiting the Bank of Mahomes for $21.6 million in cap space at 6:25 p.m. (Arrowhead Time) that evening.

So the Chiefs always intended to have this deal done before free agency began — and use the cap space they’d gain for the moves they had in mind. As it played out, Kansas City was ready to do it with 24 hours to spare; it’s just that the Titans wanted to continue working on the details. That meant the Chiefs had to go to their backup source for the cap space.

Will the Chiefs now use that money for additional moves in free agency — or do the best they can to hang on to most of it for 2025?

The best bet is that they will do both.

Link: https://www.arrowheadpride.com/2024/...us-sneed-trade

It’s not about past injury history as much as it is about how his knee will limit his future performance.

Happy for Sneed. Dude balled out in KC, won a few rings, and went from 4th rounder very few knew to stud corner who got paid. Chiefs freed up valuable cap space and got another 3rd that Veach will undoubtedly turn into something good. Everyone won in this trade bottom line. Like I said before- this is how it goes when you’re a SB dynasty like our Chiefs. You can’t keep em’ all!

It's great to hear that we get the 1st pick of the 7th round instead of the two later picks they have.

What ammo do they have to make such a move? They're gonna need picks in the furture to combat Mahomes, Jones contracts. I'm not sure they'll have to move up for a WR, unless its someone they just really have a crush on. I'm assuming Donovan Smith will be returning now that some $ is freed up.

4 weeks if someone said trade Sneed for a mid 3rd rounder or keep him for the season on the tag, 95% would have said keep him on the tag.

They can easily trade their 2025 2nd rounder to move up in the 1st now.

Yeah we’re not the ones building the roster needing that 19.8 million though.

Sneed has come in and done everything right from day 1, never complained about anything, and is a special human being who's had about as rough of a life story as you can imagine.

Maybe there was some aspect of the team trying to do right by Sneed in all this. Playing him on the tag would have royally screwed him since his value will never be higher than right now.

I'm going to tell myself that so I feel better about us just not keeping him on the tag this year.

Yeah gotta see how it plays out in it's entirety. Sucks now but we're not finished.

That would get them into the mid 20's, maybe? I'm not sure the value of that in this draft. Might be better to keep the picks and see what comes up as trade options down the road.

Could have more value if they finally do the sensible thing and move the trade deadline later into the season.

Depends who you ask but IMO there are 5 legit 1st round WR's in this draft.

Moving up a few spots can help ensure we get one because the quality drops off fast after Adonai Mitchell and Bryan Thomas Jr get drafted.

That’s a good way to view it. Happy for Sneed to get his large pile of guaranteed cash. It’s great that he did not end up with a hated Chiefs rival like the Bengals. And maybe Sneed can screw up games for CJ Stroud & Houston, which could indirectly help the Chiefs in Playoff seeding.

You just have to wait to see who's available. Nobody could've predicted the McDuffie scenario before the draft.

There's a good chance that a guy like Fautanu, Mims, or Thomas Jr. slips into that range. When certsin positions are that deep, guys tend to fall lower than they should.

I see 4 and Mitchell ain't one of them. To realistically land one of those 4 would be a move into the top 20 and you're looking at parting with a future 1 at that point.

Not a big deal though. Don't think the bag is significant between the tier 2 and tier 3 WR's in this draft and the tier 3 pool is deep.

It's way more likely that they trade up for a LT and use the money on another vet and draft a WR on day 2.

Gimme Tanny as backup quarterback!

Good move to trade him and save the money. Just like Hill.

I would take that.

Sure it's early but feels like they can chill at 32 and get a guy.

I will be very annoyed if we skip drafting an elite weapon to get a lower tier developmental tackle.

If the Chiefs have one of the LT’s highly graded and they are still there at pick 22, Veach better be calling.

I’d trade a 5th this year, our 2025 2nd and even our original 2025 3rd if it meant we got our guy (would still have 2 picks in top 75 of 2025 draft).

LT is the 2nd hardest position to fill for a reason. Getting one cheap for 5 years opens up a hell of a lot for us.

Ummm the entire purpose of trading up would be to avoid this.

Remember who’s on the other side of this conversation

If it’s a legit plug and play LT, sure.

Those guys usually gone top ten.

I feel like the most likely move is moving up for an LT. It’s our biggest hole. 5 years of high quality rookie contract LT play would be a critical part of Mahomes and Veach dominating/finishing out phase 2 of his career. It would also be huge for the transition when Reid and Kelce depart after the next 1-3 years.

It’s just… that’s the move to make this year, if there’s a guy they like.

Troy Fautanu can 100% come in and start day 1 at LT.

Mims might struggle a little bit early on, but his upside is absolutely worth the swing.

It would have to be one of those 2 IMO.

Yup. Good WR’s are vastly easier to find than LT’s. Rice was a 2nd rd pick and Hollywood only cost $7-11 million.

These older tackles are big risks. Donovan Smith was injury prone and had a neck injury. We’re lucky he didn’t get hurt during the postseason.

It’s not sustainable to keep going down that path

But what about alphas?

Uh, McDuffie already is one.

If we don't win the Super Bowl this year, it's not gonna be because we didnt keep Sneed. It'll very likely be for other reasons.

Chiefs have found 1 good WR in the draft in 6 years.

Maybe not as easy as you say it is?

Fautanu-Ok, then how are we going to be in position to get him?

Mims by your description doesn't sound different than similar talents in the 2nd round.

Usually don't spend 1st picks on projects.

I meant the Super Bowl we just won. We needed both corners to win it I believe


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Feels like really poor compensation on the trade but I think there was an element of the organisation doing right by their player who has earned a relative pittance compared to his play in his 4 years as a Chief and will surely go into the ring of honor after retirement.

Would have loved to keep Sneed long term but I am still going to want him to be successful except when facing KC.

What people miss from that game is Josh Williams was lock down, he was in Aiyuk several times and blanketed him.

Fair enough, appreciate the thoughts. I am sure it has been said in this thread, but if this was a 24 3rd and 25 7th swap, everyone would be happy. The wait sucks. Will be interesting to see how this plays out over the next couple of years.

Just got home after a long trip and saw this. What a piss poor deal, there must be an issue with Sneed having aids that we don't know about.

Call me crazy but I would probably bring back MVS if he comes in at a cheaper price and also Donovan Smith under the same conditions. They both know our system. That would free up the draft to do what we want. If a stud LT is available I would do everything I could to trade up to get him. If the LT market is picked over there will be a very good WR left for us in the first round. We address whichever position we didn't draft in the 1st round in the later rounds.

Exactly.

Maddie is already a top tier guy. Williams and Watson have shown big play ability and it’s time for them to become consistent. And the coaches were high on Nic Jones before his injury.

We will be fine at CB

There are some nice role playing options still out there.

We'll almost most likely draft another CB.

Well, I guess this is all contingent on what they do with the extra cap room now. Left tackle is the obvious choice if there's one out there worth the money and effort, same goes for receiver. Or both?

This.

And at least the Chiefs got some compensation for him rather than letting him play on the tag this year and leave as a likely UFA next year.

Which LT would be there that you like from say 15th pick and up.

I mean, for THAT team, yeah we probably needed Sneed because our defense was carrying us. Our offense couldn't reliably get drives going.

If we can get back to a solid offense (theres no reason we can't with Mahomes at QB), we can afford to lose some power on defense.

<blockquote class="twitter-tweet"><p lang="en" dir="ltr">Do y’all think Veach just took the first offer he got? <br><br>Or do you think the 3x SB winning GM that constructed the current roster did his due diligence, weighed the market and pulled the trigger on a deal that probably met Sneed’s market value?<br><br>I’m seriously asking</p>&mdash; All my teams win because of the refs (@AndrewRSpru) <a href="https://twitter.com/AndrewRSpru/status/1771600010750091344?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">March 23, 2024</a></blockquote> <script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>

This will be ignored bc every Chief fan over values their own.