As the Kansas City Chiefs’ offseason continues, general manager Brett Veach and company are getting creative in how salary cap space is being manufactured. This time around, the assist comes from quarterback Patrick Mahomes.

Per a report from Adam Schefter of ESPN, Kansas City is restructuring Mahomes’s contract. In the process, they’ll gain $21.6 million in cap relief.

Prior to the restructure, Mahomes carried a $9.85M base salary for the 2024 league year. That figure was accompanied by a $12.86M prorated signing bonus, $34.9M roster bonus and a cap number of $58.6M. Last year, Kansas City “restructured his agreement” by giving Mahomes an increase in cash over the 2023, 2024, 2025 and 2026 seasons. Spotrac reports that $27M of Mahomes’s 2024 roster bonus was converted into a signing bonus.

Back in September, I wrote about the revised Mahomes deal on Arrowhead Report and the benefits it provided for both sides:
All in all, this is a hat-tip from the Chiefs to their star quarterback. With that said, it’s also one that comes with a serious plus for the team as well. For Mahomes, he’s getting more money up front and the original expectation that he will be a Chief for years and years to come remains. (Both sides could simply iron out a new extension in 2026.) For Kansas City, the roster bonus deadline getting moved back a couple of months helps provide more clarity and flexibility in offseason decision-making. Veach and his staff have been creative in their contract structures as of late — including defensive tackle Chris Jones’s deal — and this is yet another example of that.
Before the news of Mahomes’s restructure, estimates for Kansas City’s available cap space varied. While a few educated guesses indicated the team may get through to the start of the new league year on Wednesday in the clear, not everyone was in that boat. Salary cap sites such as OverTheCap (and Spotrac) had the Chiefs in the negative. With this newfound salary space, Wednesday’s 4:00 p.m. ET deadline doesn’t appear to be a problem anymore for the back-to-back reigning champs.