If Chiefs cut QB Daniel, can Pryor take the backup baton? Umm ...
KANSAS CITY, Mo. -- Can't fit into your salary-cap skinny jeans? Fine. Whack Chase Daniel and that $4.8 million cap hit for carrying a clipboard against non-San Diego dance partners. Boom. Problem solved. Right?
Umm ...
"The thing is," asks Joel Corry, a former NFL agent and now an analyst with the Football Post and CBSSports.com, "do you really want to go into the season with an unproven backup?"
Hang on. We're pondering.
"Because what if Alex (Smith) gets hurt?" Corry continues. "At least you know, (with) Chase Daniel, his starts, he's competent. You may not want him for seven, eight games, but you know, in a pinch, you're OK with him.
"I think you need to keep him. If Alex gets hurt, that question will be, 'Why isn't Chase Daniel here?' That's the first thing that fans will say: 'Why did we get rid of him?'"
The Kansas City Chiefs' offseason program officially launches into Phase One on Monday, with voluntary OTAs and minicamps to follow intermittently over the next seven weeks. The Chiefs have five quarterbacks, four with functional anterior cruciate ligaments (Tyler Bray being the exception), one coming off a lacerated spleen (Smith) and another signed in the dead of winter (Terrelle Pryor).
Among the questions that will be asked -- and might get answered -- is this one: Is there a viable No. 2 among those four backup signal-callers who doesn't cost "starter" money? Or, more specifically, could Pryor, who made 10 NFL starts with Oakland in 2012 and '13 (his team won just three of them), actually push Daniel, if not outright supplant him?
"Well, I don't know if you could operate the exact same offense with Pryor because he's not a conventional quarterback," Corry says.
Great. Now we're pondering again.
"He's an intriguing prospect and maybe you can find some role for him where he's a utility player as well," Corry continues. "For lack of a better word, (another) 'Slash.' You sign this guy and you've got young quarterbacks, too."
We don't know what to make of 2014 fifth-round selection Aaron Murray, really, other than a cup of preseason coffee and awkward questions about The Bachelorette. The rookie project of 2013, Bray, has a big arm, a big body and a big question mark over his head because of injuries.
Pryor became the fifth Chiefs quarterback on the roster when he was signed in January. He effectively replaces Bray in the preseason rotation after the former Tennessee star tore his ACL over the winter, a setback that is expected to shelve the latter at least through the summer. Precedent dictates that four of the five could stay, if one can be buried/redshirted on an inactive list of some kind (as Bray was last fall), but only three will wind up as a legitimate part of the scenery.
So: Is Pryor a scout-team body for April through August? Or could he serve a larger, more flexible function?
At 6-foot-6, 240 pounds, the ex-Buckeye is still just 25 and can run like the wind, joining a roster where the best wide receivers are all 6-foot or smaller. Chiefs coach Andy Reid has discounted the notion of a position switch for Pryor and the team, for now, does want four quarterbacks to practice with while roster parameters allow it.
Of course, the 2015 rookie haul might change all of that in two weeks, and Reid can't resist getting new, young quarterbacks to play with every spring. And speaking of, OverTheCap.com projects the Chiefs with $2.416 million in cap room, with those aforementioned draft picks yet to sign. Cutting Daniel would open up roughly $3.3 million while leaving $1 million in dead money.
"You could always restructure Smith and chop his base down to a million," Corry offers. "I thought that was something they were going to have to do, but they've resisted it so far."
According to Spotrac.com, of the top 25 quarterback "cap hits" in the league for 2015, the Chiefs have two in Smith (No. 10 overall, with a $15.6 million hit) and Daniel (No. 22). No other NFL team is among the top 25 twice, and Daniel's cap count of $4.8 million is higher than starters such as Jacksonville's Blake Bortles ($4.6 million) and Miami's Ryan Tannehill ($4.03 million), although both are playing out their rookie deals.
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The Chiefs' $22.136 million in cap dollars toward the five quarterbacks is the second-highest percentage of money allocated to signal-callers in the NFL, at 15.15 percent of available cap space, behind only the Saints (18.65 percent).
That said ...
"(If) what I think they believe about Bray is right," Corry says, "it's going to be an uphill battle for Pryor to make the team strictly as a quarterback."
The plot thickens. The cap room thins.
You can follow Sean Keeler on Twitter at @SeanKeeler or email him at seanmkeeler@gmail.com.
