Kansas City Chiefs

Kansas City Chiefs All-Pro tight end Travis Kelce is reportedly getting a raise in salary for the 2022 season.

According to NFL Network's Ian Rapoport, Kelce and the Chiefs agreed to an adjusted contract Wednesday that will see $3 million "moved from the back of the deal to properly compensate" him.

The #Chiefs moved $3M forward from the back of Travis Kelce’s contract, giving him a raise for 2022, source said. https://t.co/MltYWFTZoB

— Ian Rapoport (@RapSheet) July 27, 2022

Per Spotrac, Kelce signed a four-year, $57.25 million contract extension with the Chiefs in 2020 that included $22.75 million in guaranteed money.

The 32-year-old Kelce has been the NFL's premier tight end for the past several seasons, building a strong Hall of Fame-worthy resume along the way.

Kelce has been named to the Pro Bowl in each of the past seven seasons, and the nine-year pro is a three-time first-team All-Pro to boot.

Perhaps most impressively, Kelce has eclipsed the 1,000-yard mark six seasons in a row, making him the first tight end in NFL history to accomplish that feat.

The one-time Super Bowl champion was as good as ever last season, finishing with 92 receptions for 1,125 yards and nine touchdowns in 16 games for a Chiefs team that won the AFC West and reached the AFC Championship Game.

Kelce was dominant during the playoffs as well, racking up 23 grabs for 299 yards and three touchdowns in three games.

While Kelce has long been a key to the success of quarterback Patrick Mahomes and the Chiefs as a whole, he may be even more integral in 2022 following Kansas City's decision to trade wide receiver Tyreek Hill to the Miami Dolphins.

Kelce and Hill had been 1A and 1B in terms of Mahomes' favorite targets, but now there is no debate that Kelce will be the go-to guy.

Wide receiver Mecole Hardman is returning, plus the Chiefs signed wideouts JuJu Smith-Schuster and Marquez Valdes-Scantling in free agency, but none of them come close to matching the impact Kelce has on an offense.

KC's AFC West rivals in the Los Angeles Chargers, Denver Broncos and Las Vegas Raiders all got significantly better this offseason, leading to some questions regarding whether the Chiefs can maintain their spot atop the division.

If they are going to do so, they will likely need Kelce to enjoy one of his best seasons yet in 2022.

Kansas City Chiefs running back Clyde Edwards-Helaire has been placed on the physically unable to perform list, per NFL Network's Tom Pelissero.

The extent of the 23-year-old's injury is unclear.

Edwards-Helaire dealt with injuries throughout last season. He missed five games from Week 6-10 with a sprained MCL.

A shoulder injury kept him out of the final two games of the regular season and the AFC Wild Card Game against the Pittsburgh Steelers.

There's no indication that the Chiefs missed the LSU product when he didn't play, though. They racked up 290 rushing yards over their final two regular-season games, and Jerick McKinnon had 142 yards from scrimmage on 18 touches in the 42-21 win over the Steelers.

A first-round pick by the Chiefs in the 2020 NFL draft, Edwards-Helaire hasn't lived up to his potential thus far. He did have 1,100 yards from scrimmage and five total touchdowns as a rookie, but he didn't have more than 79 rushing yards in each of his final nine games.

Edwards-Helaire had back-to-back 100-yard rushing games in Weeks 3 and 4 of the 2021 season, but he only had 226 total rushing yards in six games after that.

Kansas City has such an explosive offense with Patrick Mahomes at quarterback that running the ball isn't a requisite for the team to have success.

Ronald Jones will fill in as the lead running back until Edwards-Helaire is able to return. McKinnon, Derrick Gore and Isiah Pacheco should also get touches for the offense.

Money talks for Miami Dolphins star Tyreek Hill.

During an appearance Monday on ESPN's First Take, the wide receiver acknowledged he might still be with the Kansas City Chiefs if they had offered a contract extension closer to the amount of the one he signed with Miami.

Upon his trade to the Dolphins, Hill put pen to paper on a four-year, $120 million contract, which made him the highest-paid wideout in NFL history.

The 28-year-old is coming off his sixth straight Pro Bowl appearance. In 91 games for the Chiefs, he caught 479 passes for 6,630 yards and 56 touchdowns.

Losing Hill is a massive blow for the offense, one that could take multiple seasons to address.

Still, it was easy to see the Chiefs' calculations for trading him to the Dolphins.

Davante Adams could be a trendsetter or a cautionary tale. His five-year, $140 million deal with the Las Vegas Raiders reset the market and potentially sets the stage for the position to be the second-best-compensated behind quarterback.

However, it's not clear whether spending upward of $30 million per season, even for a wideout as good as Hill, is a smart investment.

Teams routinely find great value at receiver in the draft.

Ja'Marr Chase, the No. 5 overall pick in 2021, was a Pro Bowler in his rookie season. From the 2020 class, CeeDee Lamb and Justin Jefferson have Pro Bowl nods as well. Amon-Ra St. Brown, Tee Higgins, Michael Pittman Jr. and Chase Claypool have provided positive returns outside the first round in the last two years.

For Kansas City, using the money it could've earmarked for Hill elsewhere on the field might prove a better use of its salary-cap flexibility.

The Chiefs used a second-round pick on Skyy Moore and signed JuJu Smith-Schuster and Marquez Valdes-Scantling as free agents. Individually, none of the three can match Hill; collectively, they could help Patrick Mahomes helm one of the league's most potent aerial attacks.

One defensive coordinator believes he found the one glaring flaw in Patrick Mahomes' game.

The coordinator told The Athletic's Mike Sando, as part of Sando's NFL quarterback rankings, the Kansas City Chiefs star can struggle when he has to look off his first read:

We love Mahomes because of his unorthodox throws, not because of his natural pocket presence. And when that disappears, that is when they lose games. I don’t think that is a 1. I think that is a 2. Nothing against the guy. I love the kid. But take his first read away and what does he do? He runs, he scrambles and he plays streetball.

Early into the 2021 season, it looked like NFL defenses were finally beginning to neutralize Mahmoes a bit. Through seven games, the Chiefs were 3-4, and their starting quarterback had thrown for 2,093 yards, 18 touchdowns and nine interceptions. Twelve had been his previous high for interceptions in a single season.

Kansas City proceeded to win nine of its final 10 games, and Mahomes looked more like the passer who won an MVP in 2018. During that stretch, he had 2,746 passing yards and 19 touchdowns to four interceptions.

Blanketing Mahomes' first read and flushing him from the pocket is obviously one way to make life difficult for him, but his propensity to play "streetball" is one thing that sets him apart from so many of his peers.

The 26-year-old is so good when throwing at the move, and he can release the ball from so many different angles. Just when you think you've removed all of his options, he finds a window.

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— NFL (@NFL) March 17, 2022

Mahomes will have to adjust to life without Tyreek Hill in 2022, and he might compensate by improvising even more in the pocket.

Still, one defensive play-caller who said Mahomes is not "the greatest at diagnosing" conceded it may not matter all that much.

"If you’re a matchup-oriented team and you lose one of your top matchup guys like that, it is going to affect how you play," the coach said to Sando. "Maybe he has to adapt a little bit, but I think he has all the makeup to do it.”

For the past several years, the Kansas City Chiefs have reigned supreme in the AFC West. Dating back to 2016, they have won the division six straight times. Each of the past four years have featured the Chiefs hosting the AFC Championship Game, and two included trips to the Super Bowl.

However, that run of dominance is in real jeopardy in 2022. While the rest of the teams in the division spent the offseason adding impact players at a dizzying pace, a lack of cap space prevented the Chiefs from making any major moves.

In fact, the biggest move Kansas City made in the offseason involved one of the team's best players, Tyreek Hill, leaving town. And as if major questions at wide receiver and defense weren't bad enough, the team's best offensive lineman is unhappy about his contract situation and not expected to report to training camp.

The key word for the 2022 Chiefs as camp opens is uncertainty—so much uncertainty that Kansas City's divisional dominance could be derailed.

That disgruntled offensive lineman is left tackle Orlando Brown Jr., who the Chiefs acquired from the Baltimore Ravens via trade last year. The Chiefs applied the franchise tag to Brown in March, and the July 15 deadline for the team to sign Brown to a long-term deal came and went without an agreement.

Per Pete Grathoff of the Kansas City Star, while appearing on NFL Now, the NFL Network’s Jeffri Chadiha reported that the team wasn't happy with how negotiations with Brown unfolded.

“There was frustration and there was disappointment. They really like Orlando Brown Jr., they love having him be a part of this team, but the money he was asking for was too high for them. They feel like they don’t want to not have stability at left tackle here, but they also don’t want to pay top-of-the-market money for a player that they don’t think is the best player at his position in the NFL.

"One front office person said, 'This isn’t the same guy that we traded for.' The feeling there is that when they got him from Baltimore is that he was going to be a team player and work with them on a team-friendly type of deal. That was not the case. Right now we’re looking at a situation where Orlando Brown probably won’t be there for training camp and may not be there for Week 1.”

While speaking to reporters at OTAs, Chiefs quarterback Patrick Mahomes expressed optimism that Brown would eventually re-join the team:

"I talk to Orlando all the time. Me and him have a great relationship. Obviously, we wanted to get the deal done. I'm sure he wanted to get the deal done, everything like that. But at the end of the day, we're gonna go out there and play football and I'm excited for him to be here and be a part of the team again."

However, head coach Andy Reid admitted that Brown might not be out there when Kansas City's veteran players report July 26:

"I don't know whether he's going to be here or not. If he's here, great. And if he's not, we move on. That's how we've done it in the past. This isn't the first time I've been through something like this. My thing is, we just go. Whoever the next guy is that's gonna step in there—we know Joe Thuney can do it in a heartbeat—so, if we need to go in that direction, we can go in that direction. We've got some new faces in there that can also do it."

That Reid would express a "next man up" philosophy is understandable. And the reality is that Brown doesn't have much in the way of leverage—his options are to play in 2022 under the $16.7 million franchise tag or sit out and forfeit almost $1 million for every game missed.

But if Brown digs in and misses regular-season action, his absence won't be easily shrugged off. Thuney is a capable veteran guard, but he's just that—a guard. He hasn't spent any real time at tackle since college. Reserve tackle Geron Christian started eight games for the Houston Texans in 2021, but he's not close to the caliber of player Brown is.

One of the Chiefs' strengths is an offensive line that Pro Football Focus ranked ninth in the league this year. But that's with Brown on the field. Remove him from the equation, and the line is average.

It's just one more potential issue for a team that was already staring at a few.

While appearing on Good Morning Football last week, Chiefs wideout Mecole Hardman said he thinks the team's new-look receiving corps will shine in 2022.

"[Losing] a guy like Tyreek [Hill] with a lot of targets, I think it's a lot of targets to go around," he said, per Kevin Patra of NFL.com. "Obviously, we've got a good group of guys, receivers-wise, so it's definitely going to be a good year to come up a little bit and just have fun with it and just take advantage of the opportunity."

But after trading Hill to the Miami Dolphins, every wide receiver on Kansas City's roster combined has exactly one 1,000-yard season—JuJu Smith-Schuster in 2018. Last year, Smith-Schuster had just 15 catches over five games before he suffered a shoulder injury that ended his regular season.

Fellow free-agent addition Marquez Valdes-Scantling has never had 40 catches or 700 receiving yards in a season. Hardman's best season was last year, when he caught 59 passes for 693 yards.

Yes, the Chiefs still have the NFL's best tight end in Travis Kelce. But until one of those wideouts shows he can be a consistent threat, Kelce will receive all kinds of attention from opposing defenses.

The defense has issues as well. The Chiefs were 27th in the league against the pass in 2021, allowing 251.4 yards per game. Kansas City's secondary lost cornerback Charvarius Ward and safety Tyrann Mathieu in free agency, and while the team added replacements in Trent McDuffie and Justin Reid, the former is a rookie and the latter is a clear downgrade from Mathieu.

That revamped secondary will likely be tested with regularity in 2022—only three teams logged fewer sacks in 2021 than the Chiefs.

What exacerbates these issues is that while the Chiefs took a step back (on paper) this offseason, every other team in the AFC West leaped forward.

The Raiders made big-time acquisitions on both sides of the ball, signing edge-rusher Chandler Jones and trading for wide receiver Davante Adams. The Los Angeles Chargers should be vastly improved on defense after adding edge-rusher Khalil Mack and cornerback J.C. Jackson. The Denver Broncos made the biggest splash of all, trading for quarterback Russell Wilson.

The gap between the Chiefs and the rest of the AFC West hasn't just shrunk. It has evaporated.

Now, this doesn't mean that the Chiefs are doomed. Teams don't win half a dozen consecutive division titles by accident, and any team led by Mahomes will be dangerous.

But the days of the Chiefs being head-and-shoulders better than everyone in the division appear to be over. Whether it's the pass-catching corps, the defensive backfield or potentially the offensive line, there's much more uncertainty in Kansas City in 2022.

And at some point, one of these problems will become one problem too many.

Veteran left tackle Orlando Brown Jr. and the Kansas City Chiefs failed to come to terms on a long-term extension for franchise-tagged players by last week's deadline, and now the club is unsure if he'll show up to training camp.

"I don't know that. If he's here, great. If not, we move on," Chiefs head coach Andy Reid told reporters Friday. "We know Joe Thuney can do it in a heartbeat."

Reid's comments come after NFL Network’s Jeffri Chadiha (h/t Pete Grathoff of the Kansas City Star) reported that the Chiefs were frustrated with Brown's refusal to sign a long-term extension.

"There was frustration and there was disappointment," Chadiha said, per Grathoff. "They really like Orlando Brown Jr., they love having him be a part of this team, but the money he was asking for was too high for them. They feel like they don’t want to not have stability at left tackle here, but they also don’t want to pay top-of-the-market money for a player that they don’t think is the best player at his position in the NFL."

The Chiefs placed the $16.7 million franchise tag on Brown in March and were hopeful of reaching an agreement with the 26-year-old.

Kansas City offered Brown $91 million over the first five years of a contract, per NFL Network's Mike Garafolo, who added that the sixth year of the deal would have been worth more than $40 million "strictly to inflate the average annual value to the top of the market. That year would’ve never been meant to be paid."

Garafolo also reported that Brown asked for "top-of-the-market money" on an extension worth around $23 million per year. However, the Chiefs reportedly offered him around $19 million annually.

The Chiefs acquired Brown from the Baltimore Ravens in April 2021 in exchange for four draft picks and he was a Pro Bowler in his first season with the franchise in 2022.

In his first three seasons with the Ravens, he earned two Pro Bowl selections.

If Brown doesn't report to training camp and misses the beginning of the 2022 campaign, the Chiefs can turn to Geron Christian at left tackle.

Former NFL tight end Orson Charles was arrested and charged with aggravated assault with a deadly weapon and carrying a concealed firearm after allegedly confronting two law enforcement officers during an argument over a parking space, per Joey Knight of the Tampa Bay Times.

Charles was in one car and lost out on a parking spot to another vehicle with the two officers. The former NFL player then allegedly approached the other car and pulled a gun.

Police said the officers showed Charles their badges, but he responded by cursing and saying "I have one in the head."

That is when the officers drove away from the scene and alerted another deputy of the situation before Charles was taken into custody.

Charles also faces one charge of introduction of contraband into a detention facility.

The 31-year-old played collegiately at Georgia and was a fourth-round pick in the 2012 NFL draft.

He appeared in games for the Cincinnati Bengals, Detroit Lions, Kansas City Chiefs and Cleveland Browns from 2012 through 2018 and never had more than 101 receiving yards in a season.