The clock keeps ticking toward an important annual deadline.
On Tuesday at 4:00 p.m. ET, the window closes on a long-term deal for franchise-tagged Chiefs guard Trey Smith.
If no deal is done, Smith will play under the tag for 2025. He’ll have a fully-guaranteed $23.4 million salary. It makes him the third highest-paid player on the Chiefs, and it gives him the fourth highest cap number, behind only Patrick Mahomes ($28 million), Jawaan Taylor ($27.3 million), and Chris Jones ($23.6 million).
The question remains a simple one to identify, even if it will be much harder to resolve. Smith has a nice bird in the hand. More money this year than the APY of any guard in football. Then, come 2026, he gets either a second tag — at $28 million — or a shot at free agency.
And so, as one source with knowledge of the situation recently told PFT, at this point the long-term deal has to make sense for Smith to accept it.
There’s another wrinkle to this that potentially introduces an unprecedented dynamic to the talks. Given the Chiefs’ annual postseason runs, the team gets much more out of its players than other teams receive. Already, Smith has played 13 extra games in four years — taking 100 percent of the snaps in each one.
With so much debate (rightfully) about the wisdom of an 18-game regular season, the default for the Chiefs over the past four years has been 20. In Smith’s career, the Chiefs have played 20 games, 20 games, 21 games, and 20 games. Smith has played in all but one of the 81 total games.
So here’s the possible argument, from Smith’s perspective: His deal needs to contemplate something more than the paltry (in comparison) playoff checks for the 3.25 extra games he has played, per year.
His deal could include significant extra payments for each playoff game he plays. If it’s an incentive, it’s not part of his APY. The Chiefs would owe it only if the Chiefs continue to be as successful as they’ve been.
Since Patrick Mahomes became the starting quarterback in 2018, the Chiefs’ floor has been losing the AFC Championship in overtime. That happened twice. The other five times, they went to the Super Bowl.
Of course, if Smith gets extra (i.e., fair) compensation for playing a 20-game (or 21-game) season, other key players on the Chiefs will want the same thing. Which will make the Chiefs reluctant to set a new precedent.
That doesn’t make it an unfair request. Yes, every player contract carries with it the possibility of playing up to four postseason games each year, as relatively small game checks. For the Chiefs, it has become something much more than a possibility.
We don’t know whether Smith and the Chiefs are haggling over that issue. The simple truth is that every player who has been a key piece of the team’s success (Mahomes included) should be making that request. And the more physical their job description (like Smith), the better the argument for engineering extra pay for extra work.
If nothing else, pushing this issue could make the broader question of improving playoff pay one of the concessions the NFL Players Association will seek in exchange for the inevitable 18-game season, 16-game annual international series, and potentially shrinkage of the 50-50 share the players get from an ever-increasing pile of money.
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