More and more continues to come out about the Kansas City Chiefs decision to trade cornerback Marcus Peters to the Los Angeles Rams. Yesterday we finally found out the compensation — the Chiefs sent Peters and a sixth-rounder to LA for a fourth-round pick this year a second-round pick next year — and today we find out more details via The MMQB’s Peter King.
Check out King’s piece on the trade here, which does a good job explaining some of this from what appears to be the Chiefs perspective. A few takeaways from his piece:
- He says that the Chiefs called all 31 other teams about Peters. That is pretty surprising to me because if all 31 other teams knew Peters was available don’t you think we would’ve heard a rumor about this before it went down? The trade talks were apparently going on for weeks, according to other reports.
The Chiefs have spent the last three weeks on this deal, and only the Rams and 49ers were interested, a source tells me. Multiple sources also tell me the Browns were NOT interested
— Terez A. Paylor (@TerezPaylor) February 23, 2018
- It’s just hard for me to wrap my head around every team knowing that he was available and it not getting out. NFL front offices gossip more than my Mother (sorry, Mother).
- It’s also important to note that it’s to the Chiefs benefit for it to come out that they called every team. They can’t talk publicly about the trade but if I were the Chiefs that’s the first thing I would point out to Chiefs fans who are on the verge of taking the KC police up on their offer and rioting at One Arrowhead Drive: this is the best they could get.
- My guess before this news from King was that the Chiefs were dealing not with all 31 other teams but with the west coast teams (the Rams and 49ers were the two reported publicly so far). I figured Peters would be happiest and most successful the closer he is to his hometown of Oakland. I don’t know if that is the case here or not — the Chiefs, not Peters, made the ultimate decision on the trade — but I don’t think it’s a coincidence the team he’s going to is in California.
- The thing is, maybe a Peters deal only made sense with the right situation in the state of California, and the Rams just happened to luck out with Wade Phillips as their defensive coordinator and the very-fortunate recent move from St. Louis (Terez had a similar theory). Peters isn’t home in LA, but given the Raiders are Las Vegas-bound sooner rather than later, it is as close as he could get. It was the perfect storm, and the Rams were there to take advantage.