Chiefs bring in Justin Tucker, and Harrison Butker's contract shows why

The Chiefs signed Justin Tucker to the practice squad on Wednesday, and the price tag is the least interesting thing about it. A practice squad salary barely registers against a salary cap. The contract that matters belongs to Harrison Butker, who stays on the 53-man roster and who the Chiefs cannot easily replace.

What Butker has done this year

Butker is 11 of 16 on field goals, a 68.8% rate. For the NFL's highest-paid kicker, that is a number Kansas City would never have accepted when it handed him a four-year, $25.6M extension. The deal averages $6.4M a year, and it was built on a decade of making the kicks other teams missed.

What the contract does to the options

Butker's cap hit is $7,305,000 this season and $7,247,500 next season. Those are the charges the Chiefs carry whether he makes his kicks or not. Cutting a kicker feels like a free move, since the position is cheap to fill. It is not free when the player holds a contract like this one.

Next offseason is the first clean exit. A release or trade before June 1 in 2027 leaves $2.8M in dead cap and frees $4.447M. The Chiefs would pay $2.8M for a kicker who is not on the roster, and they would still gain real room. Anything sooner costs more, which is the box they are in. The calendar gives Kansas City one affordable answer, and it arrives after the season.

That is why Tucker matters as a stopgap. He does not solve the cap math. He gives Andy Reid's staff a way to test a replacement without paying the penalty of moving on from Butker in the middle of a year.

The Tucker question

Tucker is not a clean story. The Ravens released him in May 2025 after massage therapists accused him of misconduct, and the NFL suspended him for ten games. He has not been employed since. His career field goal rate of 89.1% ranks second all-time, which is why a team in the Chiefs' position still calls.

Kansas City is paying for a look at a kicker with a Hall of Fame level résumé and a long layoff, not for a guarantee. The practice squad keeps the risk small and the decision reversible. If Butker steadies himself, Tucker is a footnote. If Butker keeps missing, the Chiefs have an option that costs almost nothing today.

The expensive part is the one they signed in 2024. A team that gives a kicker a contract this large and this long takes on the cost of being wrong. The cap hit stays on the books through next season, and the dead money follows him out the door. The Chiefs can add all the insurance they want. They cannot cheaply undo the policy they already wrote.