KANSAS CITY, Mo. — One morning during training camp last month at Missouri Western State University, Chiefs coach Andy Reid addressed the most pivotal and controversial decision of the offseason with strikingly calm assurance and a casual gesture.
Pondering the momentous trade of extraordinary receiver Tyreek Hill to Miami for five draft picks after contract negotiations became gridlocked, Reid simplified the then-startling move that will underscore both the near future and the 2022 season that begins Sunday at Arizona:
It ultimately came to “if he’s here, and if he’s not here,” Reid said, as he subtly used both hands to signal a balancing scale.
“He’s not here” won out, of course, for multiple reasons we’ll get back to but so much so that Reid conveyed conviction about the seismic shift.
“The angst isn’t there,” he said. “I mean, it’s not an ‘oh my gosh.’ ”
That’s in part because the Chiefs certainly are better off on the horizon of the Mahomes Era because of the financial flexibility and influx of youth the trade created.
And after some initial skepticism about the deal, we’ve come to figure what Reid also seems to feel: Trading Hill will make the Chiefs better this year … even if there may be some early hiccups from all the changes that came with it.
Now, true to his measured and tactful style, Reid didn’t proclaim victory from the deal so much as project faith in it.
For that matter, if it were merely about still having Hill or not with no other implications or considerations attached, there’s little doubt that the Chiefs would love to still have a player who had 479 catches for 6,630 yards, 67 touchdowns overall and dozens of incredible highlights over six seasons.
But this didn’t happen in that sort of vacuum.
The Chiefs rather plainly wanted to keep Hill and negotiated in good faith until the Davante Adams trade to Las Vegas, and accompanying record-setting contract, reset the receiver market.
Take it from Drew Rosenhaus, Hill’s agent, who told a Miami radio station that he then told the Chiefs that “this should be the market for Tyreek. And if it wasn’t, then the right thing to do would be for everyone to benefit, which would be for the team to have an unprecedented trade and for Tyreek to go to a team that would be willing to make him the highest-paid receiver.”
As it happens, everyone did benefit.
Hill got the four-year, $120 million deal, a payout he valued more than playing for a perennial contender for a hefty but considerably lesser sum. His choice, and who’s to say he was wrong?
(But chances are he’s played in his last AFC Championship Game after appearing in four straight and that his most productive seasons are behind him as he moves from quarterback Patrick Mahomes to Tua Tagovailova.)
As for the Chiefs?
Maybe they should be thanking Rosenhaus for essentially forcing their hand to trade a 28-year-old player at top-of-the-market value.
Because the upside is multi-dimensional.
For starters emerging out of the wake of Hill, you’ll see defensive back Trent McDuffie (the 21st pick of the NFL draft) and receiver Skyy Moore (54th), each plucked via allocation of the three 2022 picks from the Dolphins. The Chiefs still hold fourth- and sixth-round picks in 2023 from the Dolphins.
You also could point to any number of key offseason signings as being at least partly attributable to financing available because of the departure of Hill, including on the defensive side (where the Chiefs also notably did not re-sign Tyrann Mathieu) where they added safety Justin Reid and defensive end Carlos Dunlap.
Signing Hill would have compromised their ability to fill those and other crucial needs.
“We certainly (wanted) to get younger on defense and just get more athletic and build that depth (on defense),” general manager Brett Veach said last week. “The trade enabled us to attack a lot of those areas.”
But perhaps it’s most evident in how they’ve sought to fill the void in the passing game in the forms of former Packer Marquez Valdes-Scantling (a three-year deal worth up to $36 million); former Steeler JuJu Smith-Schuster (a one-year deal worth up to $10.75 million) and former Tampa Bay Buc Justin Watson (one year, $1.035 million).
Along with Moore and Mecole Hardman, the only returning receiver, that’s the entire five-man corps to open the season … albeit in a passing game that will be highlighted by tight end Travis Kelce and figures to be bolstered by backups Noah Gray and Jody Fortson.
The net result remains to be seen, of course.
But the circumstances present a chance for a reset. One with multiple potential benefits for an offense that last season was marked by nearly 50% of all pass completions (203 of 447) going to Hill or Kelce, too many dropped passes and too frequent droughts — punctuated by the grim second-half collapse against Cincinnati in the AFC Championship Game.
If they hadn’t exactly become predictable, their struggles week after week against two-deep secondaries suggested some form of becoming stale or staid … or even not imaginative or resourceful enough to crack the code faster.
While not quite possessing a player of Hill’s capacities, this is a highly capable and versatile new group, better as a whole, that should create more diverse problems to solve as Reid, Mahomes and the offensive coaches work with a fresh canvas of sorts.
Especially because as much as the Chiefs might normally audit themselves and tweak approaches in the offseason, the radical change in personnel has made for something else altogether.
Earlier this summer, Chiefs offensive coordinator Eric Bieniemy said it “forces us to go back … to the foundation;” receivers coach Joe Bleymaier called it “starting from scratch.”
It helps that Matt Nagy has returned as quarterbacks coach, lending both a trusted fresh voice and the perspective of knowing how the offense has evolved from his previous time here. And it helped, too, that Mahomes hosted an informal receiving camp in Texas in part to acclimate the herd of newcomers.
So even if the offensive base is the same, Reid acknowledges there’s infinite ways to change points of emphasis and contour it to the strengths of the new nucleus.
That’s why he said a few months back that a few elements of the offense are being “dusted” off and even joked “we bring some stuff out of the sky.”
Just what that might mean is unclear after the vanilla servings of the preseason games.
But Smith-Schuster will tell you to “just know that everyone’s going to be everywhere.” Mahomes projects that it’s going to be harder for defenses to game plan for the fresh variety of schemes and personnel or fixate on one or two targets.
“I’m sorry to all you fantasy football guys,” Mahomes said Wednesday, smiling. “But it’s going to come from everywhere, so you’re going to have to kind of choose the right guy every week.”
Largely because of trading a guy whose absence no doubt will be felt early and perhaps often. Particularly since the Chiefs have to blend so much together against a particularly harsh early-season schedule and the most rugged in the NFL overall.
So at times, the trade may seem like a step back and it might appear they read the scale wrong.
But we see ample reasons it should morph into two steps forward.
Not just in the long run but over the unfolding season ahead — when the Chiefs should prosper from what Hill’s departure has both enabled and forced them to do.
