Franchise Options

The Chiefs enter the offseason with many of their players from the previous season ready to hit free agency. And just like every year, there are some big names at important positions. This offseason, however, there are two big names, each as important as the other. Where the Chiefs are in the process of building the team into a perennial contender, it would be a huge loss for either of these players to leave. These two players are wide receiver Dwayne Bowe and cornerback Brandon Carr.

Free agency is set to begin on March 13th, so Scott Pioli and the Chiefs front office have about two months to lock these players up before they have to resort to desperate measures. And by desperate measures I mean two things: 1) a bidding war with other teams which the Chiefs will most likely lose 2) having to use our one and only franchise tag for the year.

Using a franchise tag is in no way a bad thing. It can be used on a player for the next season while negotiating a new contract in the meantime. There is a hitch to the franchise tag: the cost. The rules of the tag have changed slightly since the lockout, but it's roughly the average salary of the top five paid players at his position or 120% of the player's previous year's salary, whichever is greater.

So, what should the Chiefs do with Bowe and Carr?

When the season initially ended, I thought the logical approach would be to franchise Dwayne Bowe. He has been our number one receiver since his rookie year in 2007, and in his five years, he has 4,927 yards. Even this season, no other receiver on the team was within 300 yards of Bowe's numbers. He is an offensive force, and wouldn't it make sense to keep a number one wide receiver over a number two corner?

But yesterday on 610 Sports, Nick Wright made a very good point that I hadn't considered beforehand: if we lose Dwayne Bowe, we don't have to take a wide receiver in the first round. But if we lose Brandon Carr, we HAVE to take a cornerback in the first round. And the reason is our depth.

Our wide receivers include Steve Breaston, who finished the year with 785 yards, and Jonathan Baldwin, a first round pick in 2011. Also with Dexter McCluster, who could take over the slot from Breaston, our wide receiving corps are relatively deep. Cornerback, on the other hand, is not. The only players that we currently have on our roster that could compete for that second CB position are Javier Arenas and Jalil Brown, neither which are outstanding options. Just proof that it's harder to find a good cornerback in the NFL than a good receiver.

Using this logic, it seems that Brandon Carr should be the player that has a franchise tag placed on him. It's the cost, however, that is discouraging. According to projections from Football Outsiders, the cost of retaining a WR using the franchise tag would be about $9.443 - 9.806 million. The cost of retaining a CB would be $10.431 - 10.832 million. That's for one season, for a number two corner. To put that into perspective, Brandon Flowers, the Chiefs number one corner, is making an average salary of $10,120,000 after his new contract extension awarded during the season. So if the Chiefs franchise Carr and fail to negotiate a new contract before it takes effect, our number two corner could be making more money than our number one corner.

But you can't deny the importance of Carr to the Chiefs defense. As Kent Babb wrote today on his Twitter: "I actually think Carr is more valuable to KC -- not worth more money, mind you -- than Bowe. The Chiefs are in decent shape at WR. Losing Bowe wouldn't be a catastrophe, though it would hurt. KC has no real alternative for 2nd CB." Babb did offer this advice: "Still, I think there's a simple solution for both: Re-sign Carr for amount among 85 percentile of CBs, then franchise Bowe. Done."

I hope it is that simple. Free agency should be something the Kansas City Chiefs embrace, not fear. They are an up-and-coming team with a lot of upside that players should want to be a part of, especially players that are already a part of the team. Could that be another reason why Romeo Crennel was made head coach? Because the players love him and his presence could help bring back home-grown talent? Perhaps.

Even so, Chiefs management have remained ambiguous to even slightly negative in regards to free agent questions regarding Bowe and Carr. "See the thing about free agency is those unrestricted free agents, they have a choice," new Head Coach Romeo Crennel said in his introductory press conference. "They can decide whether they want to return or whether they want to go elsewhere. And so we can have a desire to potentially get a guy back but if that guy decides he wants to go somewhere else there is nothing we can do about that."

And yesterday, on 810 Sports, GM Scott Pioli said (not particularly about Carr and Bowe but fans can safely assume): "These are guys that are key components of the past and hopefully the future. They’re players we have a great deal of respect for. We’re going to try to continue to talk to those guys and, again, it’s a matter of what those players want to do with us as well.”

The way that the Chiefs keep referring to free agency being a two-way street makes me think they are getting the fans ready for some disappointment. Maybe they have had contract talks with Carr and Bowe during the season, and either one or both are wanting to test the free agent waters. You can't blame them for doing so, and neither player indicated a desire to remain a Chief like Tamba Hali did last year before he was franchised and eventually extended during the offseason.

But to not extend both these players would be to break Chiefs owner Clark Hunt's elaborate plan for the future of the team: “When I became chairman of the club five or six years ago, one of the things that I mentioned at that time is that I wanted us to be a team that drafted well and developed the players that we drafted. I think going all the way back to 2008 and some of the picks before that, we have a number of young players who are a part of the core of this football team and we’ve made an effort the last couple of years to resign some of those guys as their contracts come up."

By this plan, the Chiefs have no excuse if they don't re-sign both Carr and Bowe, players that they drafted and developed. In the next two months, Chiefs nation will see how committed the ownership and the management are to realizing this goal.