SUCCESSFUL TRADE: The Pittsburgh Steelers have acquired Arthur Smith’s former quarterback, who is valued at $105.9 million.
Wow. Make no mistake: The Chiefs are giving up an enormous haul in this deal. Let’s say they end up making it to the AFC Championship Game and send the 60th pick in the 2020 draft to the Seahawks to finish up this trade. (If they finish with a higher draft pick than the 49ers, whose pick they own as part of the Ford trade, they’ll send the Niners’ pick instead.)
When you calculate the value of each pick using Chase Stuart’s draft value chart, this trade values Clark at 21.1 points of draft capital, which is somewhere between the seventh and eighth overall selections in a typical draft. Most organizations would build in some level of a discount because the 2020 second-round pick is delayed compensation, but you get the idea.
To put that in context, if we assume that the Bears finish with the 20th pick in the draft next year and the Raiders end up picking sixth, which I would characterize as conservative estimates on both ends, the Bears will end up sending 22.8 points of draft capital on the Stuart chart to the Raiders as part of the Khalil Mack deal. That’s about halfway between the sixth and seventh picks in a typical draft. (Again, a good chunk of the compensation on both sides here is delayed a year.)
The difference is larger on the traditional Jimmy Johnson chart — the Bears would send the equivalent of the 12th pick in a typical draft to the Raiders for Mack under this scenario, while the Chiefs are sending draft capital equal to the 18th pick to the Seahawks for Clark. To put it another way, on the Stuart chart, these two trades value the difference between Clark and Mack as being equivalent to the 175th pick in a typical draft. The Johnson chart has it at the 60th spot, but the Stuart chart is more accurate than its better-known predecessor.
As was the case with the Bears, the Chiefs are also handing Clark an enormous contract as part of this trade. The deal isn’t quite as large as Mack’s contract, but it’s a five-year, $105.5 million deal, which narrowly tops the $105 million commitment DeMarcus Lawrence took home from the Cowboys after being tagged this year for the second time. The structure of Lawrence’s deal essentially guarantees that he’ll make $65 million over its first three years, and I would expect Clark’s deal to also have a similar sort of real commitment.
Because the Chiefs traded significant draft capital to acquire Clark, though, the true value of this deal is much larger. As I wrote about with the Mack trade, forgoing the surplus value the Chiefs would have netted from their draft picks makes Clark a more expensive proposition. The specific surplus value depends on the player and his position, but to throw a number out there, the eighth overall pick will make about $4.9 million per year, and it has delivered players such as Roquan Smith, Christian McCaffrey, and Jack Conklin in years past.
Just to pick a round number, those guys would each make somewhere around $10 million if they hit the open market this offseason. Having four years of a player like that would create more than $20 million in surplus value over that $4.9 million per year figure. If you add that onto Clark’s deal, since that’s the draft capital it cost to acquire him, you’re looking at paying Clark closer to $26 million per year than the $21 million figure.
From a contract perspective, it’s a very different deal to the contract the Chiefs presumably could have signed Dee Ford to before Ford was traded to the 49ers. Ford’s five-year, $85.5 million pact has a smaller maximum value and a much more team-friendly structure; the 49ers are essentially paying Ford $21 million in Year 1 and can go year-to-year after that with modest amounts of dead money on their cap.
Combine these deals and maybe it’s not as damning. The Chiefs traded away Ford, their first- and third-round picks, and a 2020 second-rounder to get back Clark, a slightly better third-round pick and a 2020 second-rounder from the 49ers. If the Chiefs wanted to upgrade at pass-rusher without paying Ford, they eventually got there.
Clark is a better player than Ford, even if their sack and quarterback knockdown numbers were similar last season. Ford benefited from playing on a high-tempo team that got in a lot of shootouts, while Clark played on a Seahawks team that tended to grind out drives on offense. Ford had 13 sacks and 29 knockdowns on 514 pass-rush attempts, the sixth-most in football. Clark, meanwhile, racked up 13 sacks and 27 knockdowns across 424 pass-rush opportunities, which was 31st in the league.
You would also bet on Clark’s deal to age better. At 25, he is more than two full years younger than Ford. Ford underwent back surgery in college, and while that didn’t scare the Chiefs off from taking him in the first round of the 2014 draft, Ford underwent a second back surgery in 2017 which cost the Auburn product most of his fourth season as a pro. Clark has missed only two games in four seasons as a pro.
His concerns are instead off the field. Clark was dismissed from Michigan during the 2014 season after being arrested on domestic violence charges. Clark hasn’t had any follow-up incidents during his time as a professional, but he was forced to apologize in 2017 after insulting Bleacher Report writer Natalie Weiner for discussing Clark’s past in an article. It’s one thing for any organization to give Clark a big contract, but it’s another for the Chiefs, who have already had to release Kareem Hunt and are currently grappling with an investigation into an alleged battery involving a juvenile at the home of Tyreek Hill.
The issue in treating the Clark trade as part of the Ford deal is that the Chiefs weren’t limited to two options. Their choices weren’t between paying Ford as part of a long-term deal or trading Ford and using the savings to pay Clark. They could have franchised Ford or given him a similar deal to the 49ers while using their draft capital to either pick a second defensive end or as part of a deal to trade up and grab another pass-rusher. They could have waited a year, rolled over their cap space, and gone after Ford or one of the other pass-rushers available in free agency. They could have targeted someone like Jadeveon Clowney with a similar deal. They could have topped the Patriots’ trade offer for Michael Bennett and the Lions’ offer for Trey Flowers. There are countless scenarios.
In viewing this trade in a vacuum, the Chiefs didn’t come away with good value. I understand the desire to build a winner around Patrick Mahomes while his contract is cheap, but the teams that have won with a quarterback on a rookie deal haven’t made this sort of move and felt good about it afterward. The Seahawks signed Bennett and Cliff Avril in free agency; the trade they made was to send draft picks and acquire Percy Harvin, which turned out to be the single worst move of general manager John Schneider’s career. The Eagles added free agents without trading an enormous draft-pick haul for any one player to help out Carson Wentz. The Patriots have won under the current collective bargaining agreement with Tom Brady on a team-friendly deal, if not quite a rookie contract, but they haven’t made this sort of trade while simultaneously handing out a market-value deal in the process.
