A Complete Guide To The Tyreek Hill Trade: Why Does Everything Have To Be So Complicated?

Prelude

The Story Begins

End of Chapter 1

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 fourth part, we look at how the most recent draft complicated things, with some other updates.

A Quick Review

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 this table has changed with the most recent draft, and what more we have to look forward to.

The Last Draft Picks

The last draft picks remaining on the trade, the 4th round pick that ended up being #122 overall and the 6th round pick that ended up being #197 overall, finally got consummated in the 2023 draft in Kansas City. I was hoping they would just use the picks without trading to keep things simple for me. The absolute worst things they could do were to throw in a Hill Trade pick in a larger trade, which would make everything so much more complicated since I’d have to include all the other picks in the trade as well, or if they traded for future picks, as that would mean we’d have yet another year-long wait to see how the trade ends up.

You’ll never guess what happened.

Trade 1: Making everything so complicated

The first trade of the draft for the Chiefs saw them moving up in the 2nd round to get Rashee Rice. This was a complicated trade that unfortunately used the 4th rounder from the Hill Trade to move up. So now, instead of listing one 4th round pick, we have to add a total of 4 other picks to our calculus (the Hill pick itself is no longer included since it cancels out after we both received and gave it).

On the 3rd day of the draft the Chiefs decided they had enough picks this year, so traded away the 6th rounder from the Hill Trade for the Cowboys’ 5th rounder next year. What’s interesting about this trade is that this pick was actually originally from the Bears, so was at the top of the 6th round. This pick could theoretically be even later in the 2024 draft depending on comp picks and how well the Cowboys do.

Regardless, it means that we now have a 2024 pick in our tables, so we’ll be watching the draft yet again waiting to see which players get the privilege of being in the Hill Trade.

With that being said, here is the trade as it currently stands.

A Quick Tyreek Hill Contract Update

This offseason the Dolphins restructured Hill’s contract, moving some money from 2023 into later seasons. Normally I probably wouldn’t let this effect my accounting since this is very much post-trade, but in this case I believe this restructure was planned all along. Initially the 2023 number was higher than 2024 and 2025, which is a bit backwards since the cap always goes up. But as you can see, now the numbers go up over time (outside of 2026, where his overall cap hit of $53.8 million is so absurd there is no way the Dolphins are going to keep it).

The idea of this series is to compare what the Chiefs gave up to what they got, assuming they would have given Hill an identical contract. In this case I would expect the Chiefs would have also restructured the contract at this point, so I am going to adopt these changes into my accounting.

New Free Agents

One of the big benefits of making a trade like this is that you get cap space in return. The problem when it comes to actually evaluating the trade is that it’s not so clear who the cap space was used on.

Previously I used Marquez Valdes-Scantling and Justin Reid as stand ins for “cap space”, hoping that this offseason the team would deliver me a nice free agent contract to match up the salary numbers. Unfortunately that didn’t happen, so after some playing around I decided to replace Reid with Charles Omenihu. As you can see in the appendix, he and Valdes-Scantling make the money line up nicely through 2024. In 2025 I will have to add another free agent, but that’s a bridge we can cross later.

Simplifying

With this trade getting so complicated, I wanted to wrap up this post by trying to simplify the comparison a bit. Instead of one giant list next to another giant list, let’s group them into meaningful comparisons.

Group 1: Busts

Is it too early to declare these guys busts after just one season? Sure. But right now neither one seems to be on track to have any sort of impact at all, as Kinnard looked terrible in camp and preseason last year and the Panthers had no faith in Corral to be the backup to Bryce Young as they brought in Andy Dalton to fill that role. Both are very much on the cutting block this offseason.

Group 2: Receivers

Now to the interesting comparisons. As you can see, a big part of this trade for the Chiefs ended up being the receiver room, and not just Hill. We gave up the group of Hill, Dareke Young, and Marvin Mims as the foundation of the receiving room to instead build around Marquez Valdes-Scantling, Skyy Moore, and Rashee Rice.

Which group is better is debateable, and depends heavily on the development on the young guys. Right now I might take the Hill group, but the fact that it’s close is all that matters as you can see when we get to the final pairing.

Group 3: Filling In The Defense

Even if the receiver room is a bit weaker on the whole, in return we get some guys to fill in the defense. McDuffie is obviously the big one, as he played well last year after returning from injury. But Charles Omenihu is a guy who should provide solid rotational depth as an edge rusher, and Coburn is a guy who, despite being a late round pick, is a high-floor low-ceiling type who should be able to provide some value as a rotational run stuffer in the middle of the defensive line.

The Hill Trade allowed us to fill in a handful of gaps in our defense, and regardless of how that receiver competition turns out there’s no doubt our defense at least saw at least some improvement from it.

Appendix: The Full Accounting

The total accounting table has gotten far too large to comfortable show on this page, so instead I’ll link to my super secret Google Doc where I’ve been keeping track of the math. If you really want to get into the weeds that’s where to go.

Tony Sommer

@Tony_Sommer

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