When the Kansas City Chiefs were mapping out their priorities coming into the 2025 offseason, they weren’t counting on offensive lineman Trey Smith to be a part of the long-term picture. That wasn’t because they didn’t want to retain him; rather, they thought they couldn’t afford him.

According to ESPN’s Adam Teicher, the Chiefs found themselves able to make an unexpected pivot when the NFL announced a new salary cap. This year, the cap went up more than expected, which allowed general manager Brett Veach to reconsider the team’s offseason approach. From there, everything else took shape.

Teicher recently spoke about the Chiefs’ shift in thinking in an interview on 810 Sports with our friend Sterling Holmes.

“When the season kind of wound down last year and the Chiefs were making plans for next year,” said Teicher, “they didn’t think they were going to be able to keep Trey Smith on the franchise tag or otherwise, or with a long-term deal. They just sort of thought that that was not going to happen.

“So I think at that point, Joe Thuney and maybe extending him was more a part of their plan. But when the salary cap came in about $10 million more than what the Chiefs were planning on, they said, ‘OK, we’re going to shift and we can keep Trey Smith.’ But to do that, they were going to have to let Joe Thuney go. So they sort of made this choice.”

Kansas City looked ready to move on from their Pro Bowl right guard—until a fortunate financial break changed everything.

That unexpected $10 million boost to the NFL’s salary cap, set at a record $279.2 million, gave Veach a window he didn’t expect. It allowed the Chiefs to retain Smith and potentially offer a second contract to a bright young guard they’d drafted and developed. However, it came at a cost, more in the short term, of trading away Thuney to the Chicago Bears.

The Chiefs knew the guard market was getting pricier with each passing season. Free agents like Robert Hunt had set the tone with massive contracts upwards of $20 million annually. Had Smith hit free agency, he would’ve easily commanded north of that amount in another market reset. He’ll likely still get that same amount from the Chiefs, but the climbing cap allowed Veach to absorb such a deal and keep Smith well into his prime years.

Smith had long outperformed his rookie contract, overcoming blood clot issues that caused many teams to pass on him in the 2021 NFL Draft. The Chiefs took the risk at No. 226 overall back in the 2021 NFL Draft, and the return on investment has been enormous.

The Chiefs were going to have to say goodbye to a Pro Bowl guard either way, and the early assumption was that Smith was going to be paid handsomely by another team. While it’s sad to see Thuney playing out his twilight years in front of Caleb Williams instead of Patrick Mahomes, the Chiefs kept a bright young core together for 2025 with a likely extension coming to keep Smith around for years to come.