LeSean McCoy trade could affect the Kansas City Chiefs in free agency

Somehow, someway I found a way to connect the Philadelphia Eagles trading RB LeSean McCoy to the Buffalo Bills for LB Kiko Alonso back to the Kansas City Chiefs. It goes like this...

With the Eagles trading McCoy and cutting players such as Trent Cole and Cary Williams, they now have a ton of cap space ($50 million-ish from what I can tell with McCoy out). They can afford to bring back any of their own free agents they want.

One of their own potential free agents is WR Jeremy Maclin. The Chiefs, given Andy Reid's history with Maclin, would obviously be one of the teams you would guess would have interest in Maclin.

Maclin only hits the open market IF he doesn't re-sign with the Eagles before March 10, which now seems as possible as ever given Philly's cap space. Perhaps the Eagles let him hit free agency -- Chip Kelly must strongly believe in his offensive system if he can get rid of LeSean McCoy and DeSean Jackson and expect to get better -- but now we know they easily have the capital to bring him back. It's just whether or not they want to meet his number.

We were asked yesterday if any of these potential free agent receivers would be Chiefs by next season: Randall Cobb, Andre Johnson, Torrey Smith or Jeremy Maclin. I said that I would choose Maclin as the most likely -- if I knew the Eagles were going to let him hit free agency.

Maybe the Eagles have a number they like and they're sticking to it and Maclin will ultimately hit free agency to determine his price. If he does, I would guess the Chiefs would be interested in gauging that price, too.

[Editor's note: Some people have made the point that, after dumping DeSean Jackson and LeSean McCoy, Chip Kelly may think he doesn't need elite talent to generate production on offense. That's actually a good point. So consider that, too.]