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It's hard to lose a Super Bowl -- and it's harder to keep a winning team together through championship-level success.
After three successive appearances in the Super Bowl, the Kansas City Chiefs find themselves with a bursting payroll and no easy way to reduce it. Star quarterback Patrick Mahomes will count more than $66 million against the team's salary cap in 2025, a fact that might have gone down easier had the Chiefs not been blown out by the Philadelphia Eagles in Super Bowl LIX. While there is no chance Kansas City resets at the game's most important position, the Chiefs' brain trust faces important decisions this offseason that could affect another legend's future with the franchise.
Brutal decisions await in Kansas City
The most recent projections say the Chiefs will use nearly two-thirds of the 2025 cap space on just five players: Mahomes, Travis Kelce, Chris Jones, Jawaan Taylor, and Joe Thuney. In order to achieve both sustainability and a contention-worthy roster, general manager Brett Veach will have tough choices to make -- starting with Kelce's possible retirement, which would open up significant cap sapce.
Beyond Kelce's future, Veach and head coach Andy Reid will have to "nail" their selections in the 2025 NFL Draft, as developing star talent on rookie-scale contracts is an easy way to remain competitive without breaking the bank. The balance of the Chiefs' selections in April's draft comes within the first three rounds, where many of the draft's most talented players can be found...but Kansas City's list of pending free agents is daunting, with up to 18 players in position to find new teams for 2026.
One way the Chiefs could open up more cap space and resign the majority of their free agents is by negotiating another contract restructuring with Mahomes, just as the two sides agreed to do last March. By converting a large portion of his 2024 salary into a g bonus, Kansas City opened up more than $20 million in cap space -- but it remains to be seen if the two-time MVP will agree to help out the Chiefs even further.