I'm not so sure about their high-water mark for this reason. I've looked at Mahomes contract and it's brilliantly constructed. Built in to their best players contracts are yearly roster bonuses which are readily turned into signing bonuses to gain cap space. It's genius and the way of the future. I expect BB to be using this heavily in future. Take Mahomes' contract: he has yearly roster bonuses starting this year of $21M, $27M, $34M and $34M. Those roster bonuses or any part of them can be turned into a signing bonus in 5 minutes to gain cap space in an instant. Yes, that amount would be spread over his remaining contract which can be extended to whenever, but the technique gives them far more flexibility than many pundits think.
Patrick Mahomes contract and salary cap details, full contract breakdowns, salaries, signing bonus, roster bonus, dead money, and valuations.
www.spotrac.com
Andy has always been a coach who invested in his frontline starters at the expense of depth.
I bet he acquires a good swing tackle who can also play G this off season. 3-4 are available in FA already.
Andy's plan A is consistently very good; his plan B generally sucks. He's a frontrunner coach if there ever was one. Thinking on his feet and adjusting to adversity in the heat of battle were never his strong points.
I agree that it's not the Mahomes contract that will limit the Chiefs going forward..
The reason I think we've seen the Chiefs high-water mark is that we have recently seen something very much like this team and this QB before.
The Chiefs are a 2020s version of the mid 1990s Green Bay Packers and Brett Favre. Two straight Super Bowl appearances, a win followed by a loss. Back then Favre was dominating the league. Two straight MVPs followed by a year where Favre shared the MVP with Barry Sanders. During this three year stretch Favre looked unstoppable, but then the rest of the league caught up.
Favre continued to put up great passing numbers for most of the rest of his career, but he never made it back to another Super Bowl. Part of the reason for that is that Kurt Warner and Donovan McNabb and Drew Brees came along. Even if Favre had made another Super Bowl, he would have had to defeat a team led by Peyton Manning, Ben Roethlisberger, or Tom Brady.
Another very similar example is Russell Wilson and the Seattle Seahawks. Same back-to-back appearances scenario - a SB win followed by an SB loss. It's really difficult for a team that collectively thought it was about to become a dynasty have to face the reality that they're not as invincible as they thought. And as the doubts creep in for that one team, the other 31 teams gain a little bit more confidence when they go up against the candidate dynasty.
So I think it's likely that a similar future awaits Mahomes and the Chiefs. Mahomes has already had the equivalent of the Elway vs. Favre Super Bowl encounter last month with Brady, and from here on out he'll be battling teams led by Josh Allen and Baker Mayfield and Trevor Lawrence and Lamar Jackson and Joe Burrow and Justin Herbert, and that's just the AFC. Even if Mahomes makes it to the Super Bowl he'll still be saddled with a coach that can't make adjustments, a coach that abandons the run when he falls behind, and a coach doesn't know clock management. Oh, and Mahomes is playing on one of the most undisciplined teams in the NFL. If he makes the Super Bowl in the next two or three years his likely opponent at the QB position will be Brady, Rodgers or Wilson; I don't like his chances very much in that scenario.
Of course, I could be wrong, and Mahomes may get back to one of more Super Bowls, and he may win a couple of more. But in his two Super Bowls so far, he hasn't played well. And from here on out, he's going to find out what Brady and the Patriots found out - every week, the opposing team he's facing will treat the game as if they're playing their own regular season Super Bowl. Every opponent is going to try to make a name for themselves by knocking off the Chiefs.
One final point: Mahomes won't have Belichick-level defenses to help him - he's going to have to be the hero in a lot of his games. And as we saw in Super Bowl LV, he and the Chiefs can be solved. Not every team can do what the Bucs did, but all of them will be trying to. And with the Chiefs having to rebuild their offensive line this year, there won't be a lot of resources expended on the defense. I fully expect a step back from the Chiefs in 2021.
