Sam McDowell: Here's why the Chiefs traded Joe Thuney, despite needing help on the offensive line

Sam McDowell, The Kansas City Star on Mar 5, 2025

Published in Football

By clicking submit, I authorize Arcamax and its affiliates to: (1) use, sell, and share my information for marketing purposes, including cross-context behavioral advertising, as described in our Privacy Policy , (2) add to information that I provide with other information like interests inferred from web page views, or data lawfully obtained from data brokers, such as past purchase or location data, or publicly available data, (3) contact me or enable others to contact me by email or other means with offers for different types of goods and services, and (4) retain my information while I am engaging with marketing messages that I receive and for a reasonable amount of time thereafter. I understand I can opt out at any time through an email that I receive, or by clicking here

KANSAS CITY, Mo. — Not even one month after their offensive line was battered and bruised in Super Bowl LIX, the Chiefs have traded away one of their most reliable linemen.

And it’s really good business.

Or, rather, necessary business.

The Chiefs agreed to trade left guard Joe Thuney to the Chicago Bears in exchange for a fourth-round pick in the 2026 NFL Draft, sources told The Kansas City Star. The Athletic’s Dianna Russini first reported the trade discussions Wednesday morning.

Which leaves the Chiefs, a team that should prioritize help on its offensive line above literally every other need this offseason, departing with a four-time All-Pro selection.

Confused?

Let’s make sense of that, because there’s actually a lot of sense in it, but the kind that can be hard to accept.

We can’t argue that the Chiefs roster improved Wednesday. It didn’t.

But their long-term plans did.

That’s the part for which the Chiefs deserve some commendation, because you know there had to be the urge to prioritize the immediate fixes on the offensive line just 24 days after they got their butts kicked in front of a couple hundred million people.

Thuney played well enough to earn a contract extension this offseason. But a Chiefs team that charges $100 million of its salary cap to two players — quarterback Patrick Mahomes ($66.3 million) and defensive tackle Chris Jones ($34.8 million) — cannot afford to pay a 32-year-old left guard anywhere near the top of market. Kansas City got a return for Thuney before he walked out the door for free.

And it sure makes it easier to digest paying the 25-year-old right guard, Trey Smith, at the top of the market, by the way. Easier. Not necessarily easy.

Which is at the crux of the Chiefs’ internal discussions over these last six days. They were set to have a three-man interior offensive line — Thuney, Creed Humphrey and Smith — occupy $61 million against the salary cap, with Humphrey and Smith’s numbers only growing over ensuing seasons. That’s untenable, and I pointed out the reasons why last week.

A team with this many needs and this few financial resources to fill them cannot send all its dollars toward non-premium positions, particularly when the need for the real premium position on the line, left tackle, remains.

It won’t, as it turns out.

The blueprint was Thuney or Smith, rather than Thuney and Smith, and the response to that decision is pretty simple: The Chiefs opted for the 25-year-old over the 32-year-old.

They could’ve stuck it out for a year, eaten all those cap charges in 2025 alone and done everything to ensure they could protect Patrick Mahomes.

Instead, they’re protecting the championship window that Patrick Mahomes provides.

That sounds easy. It’s the hard part.

The Chiefs are graded on a Super Bowl curve annually, the curve they’ve provided us with five trips to the Super Bowl in the last six years.

Chiefs general manager Brett Veach isn’t operating in the same occupation as his 31 peers in the NFL. There has to be some instinct every year to push the chips toward the middle of the table and surround Mahomes with the best talent.

But it would be darn near impossible to devote three of the six largest contracts on the team to interior linemen (again, non-premium positions) and expect the remainder of the roster to compete in 2025. It’s the very reason I questioned the value of tagging Trey Smith, a move that put the Chiefs over the cap heading into free agency next week. How could you expect to fill a list of needs that is longer this year than it was 12 months ago?

That’s where some of the immediacy to this payoff arrives.

The Chiefs will not only net a fourth-round pick before Thuney walks out the door, but they’ll immediately recoup $16 million in cap space, which could make them open for business in free agency, even if only to a degree.

You have to go cheap somewhere to make it all work when your quarterback is paid like the all-world player he is, and the preference would probably be they go cheap at most spots across the interior line.

But at least one now.

The Chiefs will certainly endure some growing pains asking either Kingsley Suamataia or Hunter Nourzad — likely the former — to step in for a four-time All-Pro selection at left guard, but they earn some flexibility at other positions in the process.

At other more glaring needs. At what studies have shown are more important positions.

The intention isn’t to make it seem as though the Chiefs had no choice here. They did.

But the point. They made the hard choice.

But a necessary one.

____