A Complete Guide To The Tyreek Hill Trade: The End of Chapter 1
27 repliesDespite what most think, an NFL trade is not a singular event. Yes, the terms of the agreement are in place and finalized, but the impacts are long reaching and could last for a decade.
So this will be a series (yes, a series!) examining the overall value of the trade, what the Chiefs ultimately gave up and what they gained.
In this third part, we review how the trade looks after one season.
A Quick Review
| Chiefs Taketh | Chiefs Giveth |
|---|---|
| Marquez Valdes-Scantling | Tyreek Hill |
| Justin Reid | Matt Corral |
| Trent McDuffie | Dareke Young |
| Skyy Moore | |
| Darian Kinnard | |
| 2023 4th | |
| 2023 6th |
This is how the trade stood as of the end of the last offseason. This includes all the draft picks that were ultimately exchanged, plus free agents Justin Reid and Marquez Valdes-Scantling to approximate the value of the extra cap space. See the The Story Begins post for a full breakdown of how I came to this final answer.
Today we will be looking at how these players performed, and evaluating how the trade looks after one season.
The Chiefs Giveth
Matt Corral and Dareke Young
Matt Corral and Dareke Young were the spare change the Chiefs gave up when making deals with the draft picks the Dolphins gave them.
Matt Corral is a quarterback taken by the Panthers in the 3rd round. Now you may wonder why we never saw Corral in a game considering the Panthers were trying everyone and everything at quarterback last year. Well, unfortunately Corral suffered a season-ending injury in the preseason, so he’s never actually been able to take the field.
Dareke Young is a receiver taken by the Seahawks in the 7th round. Considering he has more tackles (7) than receptions (3) (including playoffs), that should tell you all you need to know about his abilities as a receiver.
Through one year, these two guys have contributed essentially nothing. To call them a rounding error in this trade is overstating their importance.
Tyreek Hill
If there was any question about whether Hill was legitimately great or if Mahomes made him look better than he was, it was thoroughly answered. 2022 was the best season of Hill’s career, where he had an absolute monster 1,710 receiving yards, the 11th most all time. He also helped the Tua put up elite passing numbers when healthy, and overall boosted the Dolphins into a legitimately good team. They made the playoffs despite Tua missing large chunks of the season, and even came extremely close to knocking off the Bills in Buffalo with Skylar Thompson at quarterback.
The Dolphins got everything they could have hoped for out of Hill.
The Chiefs Taketh
Trent McDuffie
Hill was obviously the centerpiece of this trade for the Dolphins, but while the Chiefs were interested in quantity over quality, McDuffie is by far the most important piece of the trade for the Chiefs.
He got injured early in his first career game against the Cardinals, but when he returned he played at an extremely high level. Any film guru you ask will agree that McDuffie was not only one of the top rookie corners in the league last year, he was among the best corners period. He allowed a mere 5 yards per target. Every single quarterback who had 240 attempts last year averaged over 6 yards per attempt.
Skyy Moore
Moore had a lot of hype coming into the year. With lots of targets and receptions available in the Hill-less offense, he would have every opportunity to prove himself.
Unfortunately he failed to live up to the hype. In an offense that had 5,250 receiving yards to go around and no Pro Bowlers outside of the tight end, he recorded a mere 250 yards, falling short of replacement level receiver Justin Watson. In the 16 games he played, he had fewer than 10 receiving yards in 9 of them.
And it’s not like he was simply starting slow and growing into the role. In the Chiefs’ 3 playoff games, he recorded a mere 17 receiving yards.
The biggest area of note for Moore wasn’t even as a receiver, but as a punt returner. Early in the season he had an issue muffing the punts, including a crucial one that likely cost the Chiefs a win against the lowly Colts. He got benched as returner, but did manage to have a critical punt return in the AFC Championship Game to give the Chiefs great field position for the game winning field goal, so there is that.
Darian Kennard
In a draft class that found contributors from top to bottom, Kennard has to be the biggest disappointment of the draft. While only a 5th round pick, he is a guy the team traded up for, is at a position the Chiefs desperately needed this season (right tackle), yet only played 6 special teams snaps in one game. For comparison, every other rookie played in at least 11 games last year.
Justin Reid and Marquez Valdes-Scantling
The free agent signings I’m counting to put a face to the cap space both performed well, although not spectacular.
Reid was more of a replacement for Tyrann Mathieu than Tyreek Hill, but the additional cap space allowed the Chiefs to replace the aging Mathieu with a quality safety in Reid. The overall pass defense was actually pretty good in 2022, one of the best outside of not generating many interceptions. That’s a good indication that Reid is fulfilling his role on the defense.
Valdes-Scantling had a solid, but unspectacular, season. His receiving 687 yards were just 3 shy of his career high in 2020. When you’re talking about replacing a star player in the aggregate, that is the level of output you would expect.
Overall Evaluation
When evaluating the trade from a 10,000 foot view, most people will say the Chiefs won the Super Bowl therefore they won the trade. But they were obviously Super Bowl contenders regardless, so that’s not the best measure.
Instead the goal of the trade should have been to replace Hill’s receiving production in the aggregate while also improving elsewhere. The two receivers listed in this breakdown, Moore and Valdes-Scantling, combined for 937 receiving yards, 300 short of the 1,239 yards Hill gave the Chiefs in 2021. However, Mahomes did have more total yards and had an overall much more productive and efficient season, leading him to win his second MVP award. Even if the results of this trade specifically failed to reach his production, it clearly wasn’t too big of a problem.
That shortfall is also mitigated by the fact that the centerpiece of the trade was a defensive player in McDuffie, and in my accounting half of the saved cap space was also used on a defensive player in Reid.
When you look at the trade overall, there is little argument that the Chiefs didn’t come out ahead.
The funny thing is that the Dolphins are probably happy with the trade too. When Tua was healthy Hill provided a key piece to a resurgent team that looked capable of making serious noise in the playoffs.
The Next Steps
Time will tell how the trade continues to play out. In fact, we are still waiting for the trade to be completely finished, as the Dolphins still owe the Chiefs a 4th (123 overall) and a 6th (198) in the upcoming draft.
In addition, the Chiefs are likely to make more free agent signings that will adjust how we make this comparison. As you can see in the full accounting below, using Reid and Valdes-Scantling doesn’t line up particularly well. Hopefully the Chiefs will make signings this year that will line up better.
But that means replacing one of those two guys. So I’ll leave it up to the crowd, which one should be replaced?
Appendix: The Full Accounting
This was posted in the last post, but I’ll put it here again for those who want to dig into the numbers.
| Chiefs Taketh | Chiefs Giveth | Net Cap Gain | |||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Year | Trent McDuffie | Skyy Moore | Darian Kinnard | 2023 4th | 2023 6th | Justin Reid | Marquez Valdes-Scantling | Total Cap Hit | Tyreek Hill | Matt Corral | Dareke Young | Total Cap Hit | Net Cap Gain |
| 2022 | 2.5 | 1.385 | 0.925 | - | - | 4.55 | 4.88 | 14.355 | 6.235 | 0.965 | 0.735 | 7.935 | -6.42 |
| 2023 | 3.123 | 1.731 | 1.09 | 0.934 | 0.76 | 12.7 | 11 | 31.516 | 31.2 | 1.21 | 0.9 | 33.31 | 1.794 |
| 2024 | 3.75 | 2.077 | 1.205 | 1.099 | 0.925 | 14.25 | 14 | 37.547 | 24.865 | 1.45 | 1.015 | 27.33 | -10.217 |
| 2025 | 4.372 | 2.424 | 1.32 | 1.214 | 1.04 | 10.5914 | 28.035 | 1.69 | 1.13 | 30.855 | 20.2636 | ||
| 2026 | 1.329 | 1.155 | 2.484 | 5.1 | 5.1 | 2.616 |
Well, well, well…
Rumor, just a Rumor
But, Bills #1 WR (Diggs) drawing cowboys interest – Diggs brother plays with Cowboys.
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Remember how Diggs was pissed off @ Bills & Josh Allen after bills got booted from playoffs. Diggs is a Front Runner, he cried his way out of MINN. Sure, Diggs will do the same in Buffalo.
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Like I posted yesterday. I’m NOT worried about Bills or Cinn or any other NFL Team.
Got a link to that rumor?
Of course not.
WR:
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Let JuJu WALK – he’ll want HUGE 2023 wide receiver $$$.
Let Hardman WALK – he’ll want HUGE 2023 wide receiver $$$.
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Resign: Justin Watson/WR & Marcus Kemp/WR
I’m a FAN on multiple TE’s!! | That can run block & pass catch. (kelce, fortson, gray, bell & that TE that got hurt in preseason… bush, I believe that’s his name)
Robert Woods got cut. Keenan Allen may get cut. Hopkins on the trade market. Diggs on the trade market. Evans on the trade market.
FA wr market might not be as crazy is it seems right now come mid March.
I think all the receivers on our staff add up to less that what Miami paid Tyreek. or at least in the ball park.
$ 20 M Vs $ 30 M That Hill Got IIRC …
All I know about Smith-Marsette is he stole a skeleton at the parade. Think he finally gave it back, though
Disagree about JuJu. I think he’s go a lot of upside with Patrick. Of course, most would.
yah, I think it’s tough to say just how much (how HUGE) that money is gonna be … esp Hardman coming off essentially half-a-season AND a surgery … and Juju, sure he MIGHT get HUGE money from some desperate team, but he MIGHT also take a good deal less from KC to have the chance to play with Mahomes and in the SB again
we shall see
I think one thing that gets overlooked with this trade is the effect it possibly had on Mahomes at a QB. Gone were the days of looking for Hill, looking for Kelce, scrambling until one of them got open, run. I thought at the time of the trade that is was possible this would be good for Mahomes long term, and in the short term long term, it appears so. Teams were starting to throttle Hill and cutting into Kelce because they were it. This year, Mahomes did a great job of spreading the ball around. Skyy didn’t have a lot of yards. Let’s say we increase his production twice as much. Someone else is losing those yards. On this team, individual stats mean even less than they usually do.
Patrick led the league in yards and TDs, without the force that is Hill. Those are only metrics that matters. WHO got those yards does not, because they as a team got more than anyone else.
As for who else we added that do not directly try to replace Hill, we won the Superb Owl with a secondary still in Kindergarten. Yeah, we won the trade.
On Moore’s yards, I see your point, but since he’s on a cheap rookie deal it’s much more beneficial if he’s the one getting the yards. Like if he and JuJu were switched in production, we could write off JuJu as a bust signing and move on without him pretty easily while relying on Moore. But the way it is if we moved on from JuJu it’s hard to believe Moore could pick up the slack. So we have to spend a lot of money to bring JuJu back.
I see that, but that’s a $$$ aspect, and unless the guys we got FAIL, I don’t think it’s fair to judge Skyy harshly for what JuJu is making.
It would be nice if he had a breakout year for a few reasons, money being one. The idea that we have flexibility in needs being another. I’m just not sure if dollars and cents should be looked at that individually or micro, considering the overall, macro effect was a lot of cap relief and a SB win.
I have hopes for Ross. he’s a tall frame so he could be a good addition…
Didn’t he really impress in last years camp until he hurt/aggravated his foot? I also am very interested in what we have with him. Hoping it’s another Trey Smith situation, where medical stuff scared everyone off, but it works out great for us
Tony, it’s absolutely gonna cost $$$ to get Juju back, but Nova’s right: not Moore’s fault Juju was the better WR (for 2022) … now between Juju and MVS that’s gonna cost some serious dough and I personally like Juju more than MVS “long-term” (as in a VERY Team Friendly 5-yr deal) but I see no reason why Moore (and Toney) can’t or shouldn’t develop into another “Juju type” of WR (it’s all about possession, catching the ball, moving the chains forward and it does NOT have to be Hill-like and be “all at once”) … Mahomes turned into a VERY efficient and balanced QB in 2022
will be interesting to see how it all plays out
what Nova^^^ said
(a wise owl indeed)
That is a superb owl
yes it is
Skyy Moore also scored probably the greatest touchdown of the Chiefs’ 2022 run in the Super Bowl (on a blown play, no less).
thinking rather keep Juju than MVS all things being equal … I like Reid but he’s gonna be pricey as is MVS (and/or Juju)
what I love about Veach is how he plays the whole Moneyball side of it better than anyone
excellent stuff, Tony, thank ya
I mean replace in my calculation of where the Tyreek Hill cap space went. JuJu was a one year contract so it doesn’t fit well.
Don’t get your point on Reid. Reid isn’t going anywhere this year. He’s uncuttable considering his contract.
Replace Reid and keep MVS
Meh … Keep ‘m Both IMHO … ; )
I agree. MVS is a little more 1-to-1 with Hill being a receiver and all.
IMHO MVS is the “bomb” so to speak
If we keep him, I hope he can work on his route running, cutting, and stuff like that. He’s a good deep threat, but needs some work in the shorter passing game.