Getty Kansas City Chiefs Safety Tyrann Mathieu.
Kansas City Chiefs safety Tyrann Mathieu doesn’t sound too hopeful in a tweet he quickly deleted when asked about the status of his extension with the team.
Josh Fann of Arrowhead Addict posed the question Saturday afternoon. Sunday morning, he finally received a response from the 29-year-old that implied conversations hadn’t even begun.
“Probably not. Been here before. All good,” Matthieu said.
For the record, it’s not like Matthieu wants to leave Arrowhead Stadium. After all, he’s an incredible leader and player surrounded by younger talent who could really learn a thing or two from him both on and off the field. While addressing the media on April 19, the Louisiana native even said he’d like to end his career wearing the illustrious red and white.
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“Like I said, everybody’s embraced me here,” he continued. “It reminds me so much of a football town. I think, for me, that’s everything, just waking up, seeing the family, and then going to play football … I try not to get into it. I try to let people who work for me handle that. But obviously you want to be locked in long-term … I try to put in enough work today that things like that are going to take care of themselves.”
Let’s Not Read Too Deeply Into the Response…
Look, Mathieu’s response is arguably somewhat troubling, but let’s not pretend general manager Brett Veach doesn’t know what he’s doing. Ahead of the NFL draft, the exec confirmed an extension for the Honey Badger was a “priority.”
“I don’t know if there’s a timeline,” Veach said. “Last year, we were able to get a lot of our guys done and they were all during the summer. For us, we were really attacking free agency, preparing for the draft. I can’t say we’ve had extensive dialogue, but I’m sure once the draft is behind us, we’ll have time to address where we are as a team after the draft and moving forward. I’m sure we’ll have much more dialogue once we get (more) into the spring and summer.”
We know these things take a while, but we’d prefer they take a while without the expense of ambiguous tweets to over a million followers.
This Situation Is Starting to Sound Familiar To Last Year’s Contract Drama
Nonetheless, Veach has a point. Quarterback Patrick Mahomes, tight end Travis Kelce and defensive tackle Chris Jones all inked long-term extensions last summer. In fact, Jones’ situation slightly mirrors his fellow teammate.
Ahead of his deal being finalized, the former Mississippi State standout fired off a number of cryptic tweets that insinuated he’d be leaving Kansas City. As we all know, Jones eventually signed on the dotted line months later. Perhaps we are headed toward a similar conclusion with Mathieu.
Even if his deal remains pretty stagnant for now, it’s not stopping Mathieu from being the leader Chiefs Kingdom know him to be. He and Mahomes have been playing an active role in rounding up teammates to participate in the voluntary portion of the offseason program.
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