Chiefs Sign Orlando Scandrick

After meeting with him last Tuesday, the Chiefs have signed cornerback Orlando Scandrick, as the team officially announced this morning. ESPN’s Field Yates was the first to report (Twitter link) that Kansas City was set to sign Scandrick, and Tom Pelissero of the NFL Network tweets that it will be a one-year, $1.5MM deal for the veteran DB.

Scandrick, who spent the first 10 years of his professional career with the Cowboys after Dallas selected him in the fifth round of the 2008 draft, signed a two-year pact with the Redskins back in March. Washington, however, made the somewhat surprising move to cut Scandrick last week, putting him back on the open market.

Although Pro Football Focus painted Scandrick as one of the 15 worst qualified cornerbacks in the NFL in 2017 — and the advanced metrics have not been kind to him since 2014 — Redskins head coach Jay Gruden indicated that the Boise State product was not released because of poor performance during his brief time in Washington. Gruden said, “It has nothing to do with his play. It was really the emergence of the rookies and [we] wanted Orlando to latch on to another team.”

Financially, Scandrick’s release has not worked out well for him. His two-year deal with the Redskins was worth $7MM and could have climbed to $9-10MM if he had hit certain incentives, but he collected only his $1MM signing bonus with Washington before being let go and will earn just $1.5MM with Kansas City this year.

Nonetheless, Scandrick should see a fair amount of playing time. The Chiefs project to use newcomers Kendall Fuller and David Amerson as their top corners, but Scandrick will otherwise be battling for snaps with players like Steven Nelson and Will Redmond.

Kansas City was one of the clubs in the market for Bashaud Breeland, but the Scandrick acquisition likely means that Breeland will not be signing with the Chiefs.