Kansas City Chiefs and Buffalo Bills Reportedly in ‘Arms Race’ for DeAndre Hopkins

According to a prominent NFL insider, the Kansas City Chiefs and Buffalo Bills remain the top two perceived suitors for free agent wide receiver DeAndre Hopkins.

The DeAndre Hopkins sweepstakes are in full force now that the three-time All-Pro wide receiver is a free agent, and the Kansas City Chiefs have been consistently linked to him throughout the 2023 NFL offseason.

Hopkins, who didn't garner enough true trade interest despite Kansas City and the Buffalo Bills reportedly engaging in "substantive trade talks with Arizona," was released by the Cardinals last week and is on the open market. The veteran will turn 31 years old on June 6 and is entering the back nine of his career as a receiver, but he also showed in nine games this past season that he still has plenty to offer. Hauling in 64 passes, Hopkins also had 717 receiving yards and three touchdowns on 96 targets.

A pair of AFC teams have been perceived as the top two potential suitors for Hopkins in recent days and weeks, and that isn't changing one bit. The Chiefs and Bills, per ESPN senior NFL reporter and SportsCenter weekend insider Jeremy Fowler, are in an "arms race" of sorts jockeying for Hopkins's services on a new contract. Appearing on a recent edition of ESPN program Keyshawn, JWill & Max, here's what Fowler had to say about where things stand and where he believes Hopkins could end up: 

"My money would still be on the Bills or Chiefs working something out. They just don't have a lot of money in the cap space. The Chiefs, the concern is they just gave Donovan Smith in free agency some real money to play left tackle. So that drained some of their resources — I don't know if they could quite pull it off. They do believe Kadarius Toney can be a No. 1-type receiver. I don't get the sense that they're overly desperate to make this happen, but there's certainly some interest."

"When you talk to other NFL teams, they believe the Bills are a threat here and they have been for awhile. I still suspect that you have two contenders in the AFC that are sort of trying to combat each other and make sure one doesn't get Hopkins over the other. So it's a little bit of an arms race there." 

Fowler rattled off some other sleeper teams — the Cleveland Browns, New York Jets and Dallas Cowboys — that could either have enough interest on their end to challenge the top suitors or have some intrigue on Hopkins's side of things to entertain ironing out a deal. With that said, this alleged two-horse race continues to be a battle between two of the AFC (and NFL's) most talented clubs with star quarterbacks and legitimate Super Bowl expectations.

Whoever ends up getting Hopkins will hope that he can bounce back to a form similar to what he displayed in 2020. That was the last time he made the Pro Bowl, catching 115 passes for 1,407 yards. Salary cap space for Kansas City and Buffalo is a tricky situation to navigate, though, as the Chiefs are estimated by the NFLPA to have $2.81 million in cap room and the Bills are at $3.16M with another signing reportedly set to come soon, per Fowler. Other estimates are even less optimistic. With both teams' championship windows being open and there being conceivable ways to generate additional funds, though, the pursuit of Hopkins may not be going away. 

UPDATE: As of Tuesday afternoon, the NFLPA has updated Kansas City and Buffalo's estimated cap room to $1.24M and $1.51M, respectively, in the public salary cap report.

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