The Kansas City Chiefs face a lot of tough questions about roster building this offseason. With the team starting out about $55 million over the salary cap, hard decisions will have to be made not just about which players to bring back in free agency, but about which players to cut in an attempt to claw back a workable amount of cap space. Thankfully Patrick Mahomes did KC a favor on Wednesday morning, restructuring his contract to create $43.56 million in salary cap space.
Either way, the Chiefs flexibility (or lack thereof) should mean a lot of turnover from this roster. One name you won't see below: tight end Travis Kelce, who has been the subject of retirement rumors. If Kansas City had made the playoffs in 2025, Kelce may have called it a day, but all signs point to his pending return, ideally on a bargain deal to alleviate some cap concerns.
RT Jawaan Taylor
This is the big one as far as saving money goes, as cutting right tackle Jawaan Taylor can save the Chiefs $19.5 million. When you're this far over the cap, you simply can't ignore those kind of cap savings, especially when all you have to do is cut a player like Taylor.
Not that Taylor is, like, a bad football player or anything. He's definitely a serviceable right tackle after the snap, and even with some recent fall-off, he's fine as a pass blocker. The problem, though, is that the best way to describe his on-field play lands somewhere between "fine" and "serviceable," which isn't enough to make up for how many penalties Taylor commits — he was Kansas City's most penalized player in 2025, and in 2024, and in 2023. Every season he's been a Chiefs, he's led the team in penalties. It's time to find a new right tackle, and you'll save a lot of money by finding that player in the draft.
RB Isiah Pacheco
This one is purely about performance. Pacheco is a free agent this offseason and likely wouldn't cost much to bring back. In fact, you could probably argue that re-signing Pacheco would be cheaper than bringing in a replacement.
But the 2025 season proved that Pacheco's time in Kansas City needs to be over. His aggressive run style was fun while it lasted, but he didn't look remotely like the same guy in 2024 and 2025 as he looked earlier in his career.
Season | Yards Per Carry |
|---|---|
2025 | 3.9 |
2024 | 3.7 |
2023 | 4.6 |
2022 | 4.9 |
Pacheco doesn't have the kind of breakaway speed that you want from a lead back, but he made up for it with his ability to break tackles. In 2023, for example, Pacheco had 14 broken tackles. In 2025? Just two.
WR JuJu Smith-Schuster
The Chiefs need a full revamp of the wide receiver room and it starts by letting the current free agents walk.
JuJu Smith-Schuster was once one of the NFL's most exciting young players, but he's become nothing more than just...another guy. 2025 marked the third season in a row in which he failed to eclipse 500 yards, and while Smith-Schuster is fine as a depth option, the Chiefs have too many questions at the position to waste a spot on a depth guy at the moment.
This isn't to say Smith-Schuster won't take snaps for the Chiefs in 2026. He's a prime candidate to re-join the team in the middle of the season after whatever team signs him this offseason opts to cut him, but I wouldn't expect the Chiefs to actively try to re-sign Smith-Schuster during the offseason.
WR Hollywood Brown
The Chiefs brought Marquise Brown in ahead of the 2024 season in hopes that he could be the answer in the franchise's search for a deep threat, but injury limited him to just two regular-season games that season. In 2025, he managed to find the end zone five times, but he never managed to consistently impact the game.
One issue is that Xavier Worthy can do the thing that the team brought Brown in to do, so...what's the point of spending money on Brown?
aDOT | YAC per Reception | Drop Rate | |
|---|---|---|---|
Xavier Worthy | 12.1 | 4.6 | 1.4% |
Hollywood Brown | 11.3 | 3.9 | 4.1% |
Not that Worthy is guaranteed to be the answer for a field-stretching outside receiver, but there are too many redundancies between the two players for the Chiefs to afford the luxury of bringing Brown back in free agency. The team needs to diversify its search for receiver help.
LB Drue Tranquill
The first four were easy to move on from, whether because they haven't performed or because of the huge cap savings from cutting them. This one is a tougher call, but the Chiefs save $5.8 million by moving on from Drue Tranquill, money that the team really needs to free up this offseason.
Tranquill is still a talented player and a positive contributor to this team, but he'll also turn 31 in August and only recorded seven quarterback pressures in 2025. The Chiefs don't necessarily need Tranquill to create pressure every play, but the fact that he's unable to really create much at all limits this defense somewhat.
He's still a great run defender, but difficult choices need to be made, and this is likely one of them. The Chiefs can find a linebacker who can stop the run relatively easily. They could even try replacing Tranquill with 2025 fifth-round pick Jeffrey Bassa, who mostly played special teams as a rookie but has the skillset to at least play rotational snaps at linebacker beside a potential value signing. Again, keeping Tranquill would be nice, but the cap situation is too much of a concern here.
DE Mike Danna
Mike Danna is another cap casualty, as the Chiefs save $8.8 million by cutting him this offseason. That amount of savings makes it easier to move on than it does with Tranquill.
Danna struggled in 2025, recording a career-low one sack and ranking 94th in PFF grade among edge rushers. His four quarterback hits were the fewest in his six seasons with the Chiefs, and he only played 42 percent of the team's defensive snaps.
I'm sure the Chiefs would like to have Danna back, as he's been a solid depth piece, but he counts way too much against the 2026 cap for someone whose best role is as a backup rotational edge rusher who hasn't shown lately that he can actually get to the quarterback. His inability to create pressure makes him a liability on passing downs, and while he's consistently been a better run defender than pass defender, this franchise does not currently have the cap space for someone who has turned into a one-dimensional player over the past couple of seasons. Maybe if he were willing to come back on a cheap deal in training camp, Kansas City would entertain the idea, but not at his current cap number.