Chiefs Sign Drue Tranquill to 3-Year Deal!
The Chiefs struck a deal with one of their best signings in years before free agency starts!
On Thursday night, the Chiefs agreed to a three-year deal with Drue Tranquill, totaling $19 million, with $13 million guaranteed. This means his APY is $6.33 million annually, putting Tranquill around 17th in the league and currently in the LB position. Overall, I think that’s an excellent deal for Tranquill, and I feel it will look even better when we get more information.
This has been updated below, but I wanted to leave it in my original guess. Right now, I will guess how it could be structured in 2024. Let’s look at this deal similarly to what the Chiefs gave Justin Reid two years ago.
When the Chiefs signed free agent safety Justin Reid, the total came in at $31.5 million. His APY of $10.5 million per year was the same as his signing bonus. Reid received $20.485 million fully guaranteed or under $10 million more than the signing bonus. His salary for his first year was $1.035 million. Now, let’s apply this formatting to the Tranquill deal.
UPDATED: Tranquill’s deal is three years for 19 million with $12.5 guaranteed. He gets a $4.5 million signing bonus, which will prorate to $1.5 million annually. His salary is $1.25 million, and he also gets $250,000 as a yearly workout bonus. This would give him a cap number of $3 million for 2024.
His salary will jump to $6.75 million in 2025, which is guaranteed, and he will still receive the same $250,000 workout bonus. His salary cap number in 2025 will be $8.5 million, with the proration of his signing bonus included.
In 2026, his base salary was $5.24 million, with a $30,000 per-game roster bonus for up to $510,000 for the year. He will still receive the same workout bonus of $250,000, making his cap number $7.5 million for the year with the signing bonus proration, but none of it is guaranteed.
Based on what is known for sure about the Chiefs cap this should leave them just under $500,000 of cap space before free agency starts.
It’s a solid step to returning the defensive core. No offense to Willie Gay, but Tranquil is more versatile, has less injury history & may be a bit more cerebral. If it was a choice, I think the Chiefs made the wise decision.