What Would It Take For The Chiefs To Trade Mahomes?

A mere fun one today. Of course in the real world there’s no way the Chiefs would trade Mahomes, especially since you can only trade 1st round picks up to 3 years in advance. Even if a team agreed to trade their entire next 3 drafts in a row the Chiefs would still laugh in their face.

But let’s get outside the realm of realistic and legal options. Is there any scenario we can come up with that would make the Chiefs even consider trading Mahomes?

How many 1st round picks?

Can we come up with a number of 1st round picks to make it work? Like not just from a team, but from the whole league? What if the Chiefs were given all 32 1st round picks in exchange for giving up Mahomes?

Sure, no matter the year we’d be forced to downgrade at quarterback. But taking 2022 as an example, can you imagine a receiver room made up of Drake London, Garrett Wilson, Chris Olave, Jameson Williams, Jahan Dotson, and Treylon Burks, costing roughly $30 million combined against the cap for 4 years? On top of that a cornerback room of Derek Stingley Jr., Sauce Gardner, Trent McDuffie, and Kaiir Elam, again costing well below market value? A pass rush of Travon Walker, Aiden Hutchinson, Kayvon Thibideaux, Jermaine Johnson, and George Karlaftis?

That would be some serious talent at premier positions, but would also be so cheap that you could still go out and sign some top tier free agents. You may not have the top quarterback in the NFL, but you’d have a super team around him.

That being said, I don’t know if even that would work. Part of what makes Mahomes so valuable is that he’s going to be around for a long time. While an every 1st round pick team would be exciting, it would only stick around for 4 years before you’d have to lose all of them as they became too expensive. But Mahomes will still be the best quarterback in the NFL in 2027 (unless somebody with some unbelievable amount of talent came along).

For How Long?

Ok, so if we’re looking at just 4 years at a time that entire 1st round strategy could work. So what if we did it every 4 years? Like we get the entire 2023 1st round, then as they all get too expensive we also get the entire 2027 1st round. And we repeat that until he retires.

If Mahomes retires when he’s 43 (it’s possible!) that’d be the entire 2023, 2027, 2031, and 2035 1st rounds.

Given the breakdown from above of one complete 1st round, that’s a deal I might take. As great as Mahomes is, I don’t know if even he could oppose such a super team consistently.

Tony Sommer

@Tony_Sommer

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