On Friday, news broke that the Chiefs and Rams had reached a deal (not effective until March 14) for cornerback Marcus Peters. No one, however, knew the terms of the trade then, and no one knows them now.
It’s widely believed that the Rams won’t be surrendering a first-round pick or any players (at least any with name recognition) to Kansas City for Peters, a talented young cornerback who arrived via the 18th overall pick of the 2015 draft. With the Rams already giving up their 2018 second-round pick for receiver Sammy Watkins, it means (as Peter King of SI.com notes) that the Rams have given up from the coming draft the 87th overall pick, at most. It’s possible that a draft pick from 2019 is involved as well, maybe something as high as a second-round selection.
This feels like a wink-nod non-report-report from King, an effort to get ahead of the official announcement of terms in 16 days without actually reporting them. And it invites speculation that the Rams have agreed not to leak the compensation as part of the tentative deal, at the request of a Chiefs franchise that prefers to split the negative reaction to the trade into two parts: (1) news of the trade of a stellar performer; and (2) news of the less-than-stellar compensation.
Some would say it’s better to remove the Band-Aid in one motion. Others would prefer not compounding the initial outrage from fans and team-focused media by creating the impression that the Chiefs didn’t get fair compensation for Peters. Regardless, logic suggests that the silence of the Rams traces directly to a Patriots-style insistence on secrecy from the Chiefs -- possibly under a Patriots-style threat that if word gets out regarding the terms, the Chiefs will pull the plug on the transaction.