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We're about a week into free agency and the Kansas City Chiefs have signed (and re-signed) 32 players, released four more and declined to re-sign a total of seven of their own unrestricted free agents. It's been a busy week but the Chiefs still have money they'll be spending.
How much they'll spend is unknown but, according to numbers acquired by Pro Football Talk, they're still $28.7 million under the salary cap. PFT also reported last week that the 89 percent per-team spending minimum isn't applicable until 2013 so the Chiefs could stop spending right now if they wanted.
I'm finding out that I'm in the minority with this issue of the Chiefs spending up to the salary cap -- it's not that big of a deal to me as long as they're winning. This team won 10 games last year with one of the lowest salary caps (as opposed to actual cash) so money isn't necessarily the biggest factor in determining success. There are a lot of young, good players on this team and I'd put my priority on locking those guys up before looking to the open market for any coveted players.
That said, it's tough not to want the Chiefs to make a splash in free agency with some of these guys that are out there. That's the way it goes every year in free agency though. Very few fan bases think their teams are active enough.
The Chiefs still have some moves coming up throughout the season where they'll be spending some cash, including:
- They'll sign other free agents, probably this week.
- The Chiefs have 77 players on their roster -- and we think LB Brandon Carr and LB Tamba Hali are coming soon -- so 79 players expected to be there later this week which means they have another 11 spots on the roster for training camp they can fill.
- Roster cuts are coming. Those 90-man camp rosters? They'll be down to 53 by Sept. 3 so that's almost half the training camp players available. They'll add more guys there, too.
- They'll extend their own guys. Like they did with RB Jamaal Charles and LB Derrick Johnson, I'm looking for them to extend LB Tamba Hali and CB Brandon Flowers.