Arrowhead Pride
Contract details for Gardner Minshew, Kareem Hunt, JuJu Smith-Schuster and Jerry Tillery are now available.
Going into Wednesday, we hadn’t yet learned the details of eight contracts for newly-signed Kansas City Chiefs players, making it difficult to know how much salary-cap space the team now holds.
Now, however, the salary-cap site Spotrac has details for four of them: the contracts for quarterback Gardner Minshew, running back Kareem Hunt, wide receiver JuJu Smith-Schuster and defensive tackle Jerry Tillery.
Minshew’s details were the least surprising. Under the two-year, $25 million contract he signed with the Las Vegas Raiders last season, he was guaranteed $3.2 million in salary for 2025. This meant Kansas City could sign him for his NFL minimum salary of $1.1 million, while the Raiders continued to pay Minshew the $3.2 million they had promised.
NFL contracts sometimes include offset language that allows the old team’s cap hit for a released player to be reduced by the amount paid by a new team during the following season. According to Spotrac, though, Las Vegas is on the hook for the full $3.2 million — plus $4.5 million in dead money from Minshew’s original signing bonus.
We had estimated that Hunt’s one-year contract would have a cap hit of about $1.5 million. Spotrac says Hunt is being paid his minimum salary of $1.3 million, a $110,000 signing bonus, a $35,000 workout bonus and up to $100,000 in per-game roster bonuses. Since he was on the active roster for 14 games last season, about $82,000 of that final $100,000 will count as likely-to-be-earned (LTBE) in 2025. That brings Hunt’s cap hit for this season to... well... just under $1.5 million.
$740,000 of Hunt’s salary is guaranteed. If he is released, his contract will continue to count for $850,000 against the cap.
Before Wednesday, we had estimated Smith-Schuster’s 2025 cap hit to be $1.5 million. That proved to be a little generous. We now know he is on a Veteran Salary Benefit (VSB) contract where he is being paid his minimum of $1.3 million (plus a $168,000 signing bonus) but only counts $1.2 million against the cap — the same as a player with just two credited seasons who has been paid the same signing bonus.
Tillery’s contract was the most difficult to estimate. We believed his cap hit would fall between $1.5 million and $2.5 million, but would end up being closer to $1.5 million. The information made available on Wednesday says he has been paid a $620,000 signing bonus to go along with his NFL minimum salary of $1.2 million, making his cap hit for this season $1.8 million.
With all this new data, Spotrac has calculated Kansas City’s cap space at $14.1 million — but that is without the contract details for defensive tackles Marlon Tuipulotu and Mike Pennell, cornerback Robert Rochell and defensive end Charles Omenihu. We expect the first three of those contracts to have little or no effect on the available cap space. But we believe Omenihu’s cap...
