Chiefs’ pending free agent Trey Smith could become Kansas City’s first player in 20 years to receive rarely-used transition tag
The Kansas City Chiefs could employ a rarely-used strategy to keep RG Trey Smith for the 2025 NFL season and perhaps longer.
The franchise tag window officially opened on Tuesday, Feb. 18, giving NFL teams two weeks to assign exclusive, non-exclusive, or transition tags to pending free agent players. We’ve already discussed the possibility of the Chiefs using the exclusive and non-exclusive franchise tags, but is there a chance they could use the rarely used transition tag in 2025?
It’s not impossible for several reasons, but the primary reason is the cost.
Transition tag amounts are cheaper than franchise tags
The transition tag amount for Smith in 2025 is $20.9M, which is also the cap percentage average of the top-10 salaries for offensive linemen during the 2024 NFL season. He’d only receive that amount because that number is greater than 120 percent of Smith’s 2024 salary.
Compare that against the franchise tag amount for offensive linemen in 2025 ($25.1M), an average of the top-5 year prior salaries. It’s understandable why the transition tag number is easier to stomach for a team like Kansas City. $21M is on par with the top interior offensive line per year average in the NFL, whereas the franchise tag number is paying him more like an offensive tackle.
The Chiefs do have to give something up if they use the transition tag on Smith. . .
Differences between the franchise tag and the transition tag
If Smith is assigned the transition tag, he can still negotiate with other NFL teams and the Chiefs, working toward a long-term contract extension. If he receives a contract offer from a new team, Kansas City will have the right of first refusal.
Compensation for the transition tag differs from the non-exclusive franchise tag. If the Chiefs decline to match an offer under the transition tag, they’ll receive no compensation for losing Smith. However, if they decline to match an offer under the non-exclusive franchise tag, they’ll receive two first-round picks from the acquiring team.
Smith is a great player, but teams aren’t going to pay two first-round picks to acquire the rights to pay him a record-setting contract.
Kansas City Chiefs’ history with the transition tag
The transition tag is sparsely used across the NFL. Only five players have received it since 2013. The Chiefs have only used it once in their franchise history: in 2004, when offensive tackle John Tait’s deal expired. The Chiefs used the transition tag on Tait, who then signed a six-year contract worth $36 million with the Chicago Bears. Despite their right of first refusal, then-Chiefs GM Carl Peterson opted against matching the deal and let Tait walk.
Will the Chiefs use the transition tag on Trey Smith?
The Chiefs have maintained that they want to keep homegrown players like Smith, so it’d stand to reason that the transition tag is a valid option here. I’d wager the team prefers to use it as a tool to get a long-term deal done well before the July 15 deadline because that’d give them much more flexibility from a salary cap perspective.
I don’t necessarily think that the non-exclusive franchise tag is out of the question, but that’d be less of a move to keep Smith. It’d likely indicate that they’re seeking to facilitate a trade to acquire more draft capital in 2025. You’d give him that non-exclusive tag to give his agent leverage to get more money in negotiations with another team. Still, that all comes down to whether Kansas City thinks they can facilitate a trade before the start of free agency because carrying a $25M cap hit would severely limit their ability to add to their roster.
