The Kansas City Chiefs will have a handful of players with salary cap numbers over $10 million in the 2014 season. A player's salary cap number is not the same as what a player will actually be paid. Things like bonuses can be paid to a player and the cap hit can be spread out over multiple years, which could be higher than what they're putting on their W-2 that year. So cap hits and base salaries are not the same.
With that said, these are the Chiefs players with the highest projected 2014 cap number, according to Spotrac and Overthecap.com:
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WR Dwayne Bowe - $12 million
S Eric Berry - $11.62 million
LB Tamba Hali: $11.46 million
CB Brandon Flowers: $10.5 million
It's hard to see the Chiefs moving forward without any of these players but as Andy Reid said recently, "No team ever stays the same, players or coaches." There will be changes and there will probably be some surprise changes. Losing any of these players would qualify as a major surprise.
Here's the problem you run into with the salary cap. Let's say you don't think Eric Berry is worth $11 million a year next season. You think he's worth $8 million per year. So let's say the Chiefs made a salary cap decision on Berry and decided to cut him. The problem with that is the Chiefs can't go to the draft or to free agency and find a player better than Berry regardless of the price. They just can't. Sure, they would clear some needed cap space but they would not get better. They would be a worse team without Berry.
That's the challenge here. You want to have a healthy salary cap but you also want to keep your best players. It's a challenge and those who know how to manipulate the salary cap the best can come out winners.