After leading the Kansas City Chiefs to secure two Super Bowl titles, Patrick Mahomes has already started to prepare his squad for another Lombardi trophy. He along with his troops was practicing hard in training camp and their last preseason victories were already signalling another good season for Kansas City.
Meanwhile, the NFL world is proceeding to the regular season and the upcoming days would be very challenging for the footballers as they could fall prey to the misfortune of getting released. All teams are expected to go down from 90 players to the 53-man roster by Tuesday. Though Mahomes wouldn’t be a victim of this, he is not ready to witness the misfortune of his fellow teammates.
Patrick Mahomes doesn’t like one harsh reality of NFL preseason
The NFL teams are required to cut down their roster to 53 players by 4 p.m. ET on Tuesday, August 29 and more than 1,000 players can get cut in the next few days. Mahomes‘ team has already made some cuts this month to finalize their roster for the 2023 season and he is not ready to pick any player over another during this process.
“It’s hard, I don’t like to follow it too closely. I’m rooting for everybody. It’s hard to sit there and you don’t want to promote for one guy to make it over another guy because this is people’s livelihoods, this is people’s lives.”
Pat is not involved in the roster cut-down process, but he has full trust in Brett Veach and Andy Reid’s decision regarding the final roster. Meanwhile, the four-time MVP is having a hard time witnessing the upcoming struggle of his teammates ahead of the final cut.
“I let those guys, Brett Veach and coach Reid handle that, Clark Hunt everyone like that. They do a good job of finding the best players to put in position to go out there and have success….. I like all the guys in the locker room, it’s hard to see guys, even if it’s for a moment, their dreams kind of get cut right there so it definitely is a hard day for everybody in this league.”
Many footballers will stick on practice squads while others might expect to get signed by a different team. However, for the majority of them, it might be their last snap in national football as they could never get approached by other teams.
Patrick Mahomes gave up millions for the team
Heading to the new NFL season, Kansas City reportedly had approximately $2.9 million of cap space, albeit their general manager Brett Veach did a tricky move by taking advantage of one of the features of Mahomes’ blockbuster 10-year contract.
According to ESPN’s Field Yates report, Brett created a cap space for his team by converting Pat’s $12 million roster bonus for 2023 into a signing bonus. The move raised the signal-caller’s cap hit by $2.4 million from 2024 through 2027 and ensured a $9.6 million in cap space for 2023.
The Chiefs have converted $12M of QB Patrick Mahomes’ 2023 roster bonus into a signing bonus, creating $9.6M in cap space, per source.
More flexibility for the champs throughout free agency. pic.twitter.com/lQZlD87acp
— Field Yates (@FieldYates) March 16, 2023
The 27-year-old veteran’s deal was set to contribute $49.3 million to Kansas City’s salary cap this year, albeit the team’s financial move reduced the amount to $39.7 million. The Chiefs QB1 continued doing everything possible to provide more flexibility for his franchise throughout free agency.
Kansas City will face off against the Detroit Lions on Thursday, Sept. 7 in their first regular season game. Do you think that they will be able to keep the past track record of success? Let us know what you think in the comments.
