The Kansas City Chiefs have signed four of their 2026 NFL Draft picks to their rookie contracts, with DB Jadon Canady being the latest player to sign his deal.

After Canady put pen to paper, the Chiefs have between $6 million and $7 million in estimated salary cap space. With the three most expensive players left to sign their deals, that amount isn’t going to cut it for Brett Veach and company.

The Kansas City Chiefs still need salary cap space

Mansoor Delane, Peter Woods, and R Mason Thomas all still need to sign their rookie deals. While they’ll require $13.1 million in salary cap space, they’ll also bump an estimated $2.7 million off the books. That’s thanks to the top-51 rule, which dictates that only the 51 highest-paid players count against the salary cap during the offseason.

The Chiefs need to create roughly $10.4 million in cap space to sign the trio of Delane, Woods, and Thomas. The team also typically carries between $5 million and $8 million in cap space during the NFL season. That money allows them to make trades, signings, and procedural moves. If they want to sign or trade for a player in the wake of Rashee Rice’s poor decisions, Kansas City will need to create even more cap space.

How can Chiefs GM Brett Veach create salary cap space?

Brett Veach has already cleared quite a bit of salary cap space for the Chiefs this offseason. He went to the Patrick Mahomes piggy-bank and restructured the star QB’s contract. Then he released DE Mike Danna and RT Jawaan Taylor. There was the trade sending CB Trent McDuffie to the Rams. He also convinced Drue Tranquill to take a pay cut to stay in Kansas City.

There was a fake report that the team had restructured DT Chris Jones’ contract, but that hasn’t happened… yet. The Chiefs still have several restructures they can make to create salary cap space for 2026.

The unwritten rule with contract restructures is that you don’t want to restructure a contract of a player who could soon be cut. Why? Because you’re only making that decision more expensive. In my opinion, the Chiefs should explore a full restructure for Creed Humphrey and a partial restructure for Trey Smith. Get yourself to about $20 million in cap space. That would give you enough money to roster the 2026 NFL Draft class at $10.4 million, plus some extra funds for flexibility to add to the roster before and during the season.

Restructuring isn’t the only way to create space, though. The Chiefs could still consider releasing some players for salary cap relief.

I also wouldn’t be shocked to see a reworked contract for Noah Gray, similar to what the Chiefs did with Drue Tranquill. Gray is coming off of what was perhaps his worst season in Kansas City, so they’ve got a bit of leverage there.

There are not many extension candidates on the Chiefs’ 90-man roster who would yield substantial savings. The 2023 NFL Draft class is in limbo with Felix Anudike-Uzomah, Rashee Rice, and others needing to prove themselves. Jaylon Moore has some upside, but I’m not sure the Chiefs can say with confidence right now that he’s the right tackle of the future. There’s always potential for a new deal for Mahomes, but that probably won’t happen until they see a return to action from his knee injury. With that in mind, restructuring and cuts are probably the best options to free up space for Kansas City.