A Complete Guide To The Tyreek Hill Trade: The Story Begins

Prelude

Despite 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 second part, we can finally start the story of the men who we got in return for Tyreek Hill, putting names to what before were only numbers.

The Draft

On March 23rd, a sudden and shocking announcement was made. Tyreek Hill would no longer be a Chief. With the wide receiver market being hotter than expected, the Chiefs could no longer afford to sign him, so they sent him to Miami in return for a small army of draft picks.

Most were upset. It’s hard to view losing a star player as a good thing when the return is just an intangible list of numbers. But a month later the draft arrived, and those numbers eventually got names and faces and YouTube highlight videos.

Life is never so easy, though, as the 29th, 50th, and 121st picks are not Kansas City Chiefs. Instead, through a series of trades, they are New England Patriots. We’ll have to do a bit of work to figure out what exactly the Chiefs got (and what they gave up).

Trade #1

(For these trades, I’m not going to include the names of players for picks that ended up getting canceled out in the wash. If there’s a name, they will end up in the final accounting.)

The first trade was on the first day of the draft, as the Chiefs moved up with the Patriots to acquire Trent McDuffie. Of the 3 picks the Chiefs gave up, 2 were ones acquired in the Hill trade, so they end up cancelling each other out. The third pick (the third round, 94 overall) was eventually sent to the Panthers, who selected quarterback Matt Corral. For our accounting we have to count him as a player the Chiefs gave up, thus he lands in the Giveth column.

Trade #2

The second trade was on the second day, as Veach used the last of the 2022 Hill trade picks to trade back a couple spots with the Patriots, picking up a free 5th round pick while still being able to select Skyy Moore. Pick 50 gets cancelled out, and picks 54 and 158 get added to the Taketh column. But life isn’t so easy, as pick 158 isn’t a Kansas City Chief either.

Trade #3

The last trade was on the last day, as we took that free pick from the Patriots, packaged it with one of our many 7th rounders (frankly too many) to move up and select Darian Kinnard. While pick 158 got canceled (as we only owned it for 24 hours), we do have to include pick 233 (which Seattle used on receiver Dareke Young) into the Giveth column.

And after three days of furiously trading these excess picks, we end up with our (almost) final answer.

We will have to wait until next year’s draft to get the final official list, but since those picks are later in the draft, we can confidently say we have our main protagonists.

The Money

The trade wasn’t just for draft picks, though. When you plug in the projected cap hits for all involved, you see the Chiefs saved a buttload of cap space, particularly for the 3 years from 2023 to 2025. Even more than the draft picks, cap space tends to be a hard-to-grasp intangible number. I don’t know about you, but I’ve never seen cap space catch a long touchdown pass.

As part of this story, I will do my best to convert that cap space into real, tangible players. It’s difficult as it will never be a perfect match. I was hoping the Chiefs would sign another free agent to make it easier, but it looks like what we have now is the best we get. At this point, a new signing will only be a one to two year deal anyway.

So, like in the prelude, I will use Marquez Valdes-Scantling and Justin Reid as the cap space fill-ins. With that, the full trade as it stands now looks like this.

Appendix: The Full Accounting

(For the love of God, skip this part.)

For those who want to see all the nitty-gritty details of how adding Valdes-Scantling and Reid to the equation looks like, I have shown my full work.

The biggest problem is that both of those guys are on 3 year deals, while Hill is on a 4-year deal (assuming the Dolphins cut, trade, or extend him instead of paying his absurd 2026 number). This makes it so that 2024 is way in the red, while 2025 is way in the black.

While I’ll keep it as is for now (as it would be wildly unbalanced if you removed one of them), I plan on replacing one of them next offseason when we sign somebody who will hopefully make the numbers fit a lot better.

Tony Sommer

@Tony_Sommer

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