After transactions, Chiefs have over $23 million in cap space

The Kansas City Chiefs have made a flurry of moves since their 53-man roster was set on August 31.

The biggest move was signing former Phiadelphia Eagles (and Buffalo Bills) running back LeSean McCoy to the roster. Over the weekend — just before the season opener against the Jacksonville Jaguars — the team finally signed wide receiver Tyreek Hill to a three-year, $54 million contract extension.

Both of those moves reduced the salary cap space with which the Chiefs could work.

During the past week, the team made a couple of minor moves — making injury settlements with two players that had previously placed on injured reserve: cornerback Michael Hunter and wide receiver Gehrig Dieter.

Then on Tuesday, we learned that two of the Chiefs with the biggest cap hits on the roster — left tackle Eric Fisher and linebacker Anthony Hitchens — had agreed to contract restructures that converted base salary to signing bonuses. These were reported to free up about $10.6 million in additional cap space.

All of these moves increased the Chiefs’ salary cap space.

Now that the smoke has cleared on these moves, we finally have a number. According to Spotrac.com, the Chiefs have $23.7 million in cap space for 2019.

On Tuesday morning — with the changes to Hill, Fisher and Hitchens’ contracts not yet processed — Spotrac had the Chiefs at $12.8 million in cap space. So all of these moves represented a net increase of just under $11 million from Tuesday morning.

Bear in mind: the numbers published by sites like Spotrac are not official. They can only work with what is publicly known about NFL player contracts; the actual cap space available depends on unpublished contract details. Still, they do a good job of giving us a general idea how much cap space NFL teams have at a given moment.

What remains to be seen is what the Chiefs will do with this cap space. Stay tuned.