The Tyreek Hill trade: a bad move for both the Chiefs and Dolphins?

In the months since the end of the 2021 NFL season, it’s been easy to point to any one of a number of different NFL stories and characterize it as “peak offseason.” Here’s another candidate.

On Thursday, CBS Sports writer Jared Dubin published an article naming the most questionable offseason move for all of the AFC’s 16 teams. In it, he said that the Kansas City Chiefs trading wide receiver Tyreek Hill to the Miami Dolphins was a questionable move for both teams.

Dolphins: Tyreek Hill’s monster contract

Hill got a four-year extension that is technically worth $30 million per year, though the likelihood of him ever seeing that $43.9 million base salary in 2026 seems vanishingly low. Still, it’s a risk to pay Hill as much as the Dolphins did as he heads into his 30s and embarks on a new phase of his career without Patrick Mahomes slinging him the rock. Miami is clearly building its offense around elite speed and Hill fits that ethos to a tee, but we don’t know how different a player he’ll be in his new digs.

Chiefs: Trading Tyreek Hill

What does Patrick Mahomes look like without Tyreek Hill? We don’t really know, and neither do the Chiefs. Kansas City will evolve, and Mahomes and Andy Reid should be able to figure out a new way to succeed, but that doesn’t mean it wasn’t risky to deal away a player with whom Mahomes has shown such great chemistry and who has been the team’s lone consistent source of explosive plays.

Takeaway

Typically, we like to say that an NFL trade works for both teams. But here, Dubin is arguing that the trade works for neither team. This, friends and neighbors, is peak offseason.

Still, he has a couple of solid points. Whether Hill’s production with Miami quarterback Tua Tagovailoa can justify his new Dolphins contract is certainly unknown — and how well the Chiefs can replace Hill’s production is also open to question.

On balance, though, it’s pretty easy to argue that it’s more likely the Chiefs can make it work. If you can’t believe Mahomes can elevate whichever wide receivers Kansas City has on its roster... well, there’s not much else to say. In the meantime — even if it wasn’t their original plan — the Chiefs picked exactly the right moment to trade their star receiver; it’s unlikely there would be any other time when they could have received as much in return.

But as always... we’ll see.