'Mandated from ownership' or 'mutual parting'? Theories on Marcus Peters trade
One of the many interesting things that soon-to-be former Chiefs cornerback Marcus Peters said Monday night during an interview on the NFL Network was that he had a great rapport with coach Andy Reid.
There had been speculation that Reid and Peters had a poor relationship and that was why the Chiefs worked out a deal to trade Peters to the Rams when the new NFL season begins on March 14. But if things were good between them, why did the Chiefs make the deal?
That depends. There have been different reasons cited by NFL writers.
While speaking on a CBS Sports podcast, Jason La Canfora said the trade was "mandated" by Chiefs owner Clark Hunt.
"I'm told it was above Andy Reid," La Canfora said. "I'm told it was more mandated from ownership saying, 'I don't like where this is going. I don't like what I'm seeing out of this kid. Here's the deal guys, I'm never giving you a budget that includes this guy making 13 to 15 million a year.' Everything I heard was the owner said, I'm not paying him. I'm not sure if I'm paying him the fifth-year option, so you better get rid of him now."
Ian Rapoport of the NFL Network said it was a mutual parting.
He tweeted: "On the #Chiefs & Marcus Peters: Best described as a mutual parting. Both sides came away in a good place. KC knew they would deal him for 2 months, took the best deal with a limited market that barely included 2 teams (not #Browns or #Colts, despite their execs drafting him)"
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-lang="en"><p lang="en" dir="ltr">On the <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/Chiefs?src=hash&ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#Chiefs</a> & Marcus Peters: Best described as a mutual parting. Both sides came away in a good place. KC knew they would deal him for 2 months, took the best deal with a limited market that barely included 2 teams (not <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/Browns?src=hash&ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#Browns</a> or <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/Colts?src=hash&ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#Colts</a>, despite their execs drafting him)</p>— Ian Rapoport (@RapSheet) <a href="https://twitter.com/RapSheet/status/968197860838780930?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">February 26, 2018</a></blockquote> <script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
Peter King of Sports Illustrated listed seven reasons for the Chiefs trade. Among them: "The Chiefs decided they couldn’t trust his behavior anymore and, despite his playmaking ability, felt whatever they could fetch for him in trade would be better than Peters returning in 2018. "
It's also worth noting that King said Peters' "protests during the national anthem didn’t help—at various points he raised his fist, sat on the bench and stayed in the locker room—but weren’t the driving force behind a trade."
This story was originally published February 27, 2018 at 10:47 AM with the headline "'Mandated from ownership' or 'mutual parting'? Theories on Marcus Peters trade."