Here are Wednesday’s minor moves:
Buffalo Bills
Dallas Cowboys
Houston Texans
Kansas City Chiefs
Los Angeles Chargers
Miami Dolphins
Melvin Gordon could be on the move and the Eagles, for the right price, would be interested in acquiring him. The Eagles offered up a trade in which they would send Jordan Howard to Los Angeles and swap mid-round picks, Albert Breer of The MMQB tweets. In the proposed swap, the Chargers would also eat a portion of Gordon’s salary. Unsurprisingly, the Chargers declined the offer. 
Howard, at one point in time, was a powerful rusher with juke ability for the Bears. However, he eventually lost his footing in Chicago, thanks in part to the emergence of Tarik Cohen. This year, the Bears shipped Howard to the Eagles for a draft choice and went on to add their new starting running back in the first round.
The Chargers are unwilling to extend Gordon this year and are, in theory, willing to trade him. The latest word – with at least one team, they’ve pitched a Gordon trade that would call for a 2020 first-rounder or a 2020 fifth- and 2021 first-rounder in exchange.
The Chargers recently gave disgruntled RB Melvin Gordon permission to seek a trade, and now we have the first concrete report of outside interest. Per ESPN’s Josina Anderson, one team has been in contact with LA to discuss a potential deal (Twitter link).
However, Anderson said those discussions were preliminary, and it sounds as if the Bolts’ asking price is quite high. Mike Florio of Pro Football Talk says that the Chargers have told at least one other team that they want a first- and fifth-round pick in exchange for the two-time Pro Bowler, and Anderson says in a separate tweet that LA has indeed proposed a 2020 first-rounder or a 2020 fifth- and 2021 first-rounder.
As Florio observes, the ask contradicts the Chargers’ own approach to the Gordon situation. Los Angeles is unwilling to extend him this season and do not want to pay him over $10MM per year, and when combined with the fact that an acquiring team would probably have to give Gordon a new contract worth near $13MM per year, the demand for a first- and fifth-round seems much too rich.
Of course, there’s no harm in aiming high and then adjusting as trade negotiations continue, but as of right now, it’s hard to say if the Chargers are really interested in trading Gordon. The team has all the leverage, so the Bolts may just be waiting for Gordon to cave and return early enough to be eligible for unrestricted free agency next year.
The Chargers are signing center Mike Pouncey to a one-year, $9MM extension that ties him to the team through the 2020 season, Adam Schefter of ESPN.com tweets. Pouncey, one of the best centers in the game, was originally set to reach free agency after the 2019 campaign. 
The Bolts picked up Pouncey in March of 2018 with a two-year, $15MM deal that included $10MM fully guaranteed. Pouncey earned his fourth Pro Bowl nod last year and the deal proved to be a brilliant one for LA. This time around, Pouncey gets a pay bump, but it’s still a worthwhile investment for GM Tom Telesco & Co.
Even though the club worked something out with their center, they’re still refusing to talk with star Melvin Gordon about a possible extension.
In other Bolts news – the club was forced to place safety Derwin James on injured reserve over the weekend. Fortunately, James is expected to recover in time to return in the middle of the season.
Listed below are the Sunday roster moves for the four NFC West teams. Following the 53-man roster cutdown deadline yesterday, many teams will make slight tweaks to their rosters, claiming players off waivers or signing guys who clear waivers. Those transactions for the Broncos, Chargers, Chiefs and Raiders are noted below.
Additionally, teams can begin constructing their 10-man practice squads today. You can check out our glossary entry on practice squads to brush up on those changes, as well as all the other guidelines that govern the 10-man units, whose players practice with the team but aren’t eligible to suit up on Sundays.
Here are Sunday’s AFC West transactions, which will continue to be updated throughout the day.
Kansas City Chiefs
Derwin James underwent foot surgery on Thursday, and the second-year Chargers safety will soon have a clearer timeline. The Chargers will place the All-Pro talent on IR before Week 1, Ian Rapoport of NFL.com reports (on Twitter).
The Bolts made the move to place James on IR Sunday. They are planning to replace him on the roster with defensive back Jaylen Watkins, Daniel Popper of The Athletic tweets.
Los Angeles will carry James through to their 53-man roster, making him eligible for one of its two IR-return slots. Were the Chargers to place James on IR before finalizing their 53-man unit, he would be out for the season. With James on IR after roster cutdown day, the Bolts will have to play at least two months without him.
That lines up with James’ timetable. He is expected to need at least three months to recover from the stress fracture in the fifth metatarsal of his right foot, making an IR stay logical. He will not be eligible to return from IR until Week 9, and if this recovery timeline is accurate, it may be further into the season before the Chargers have their back-line chess piece available again.
While the Chargers will obviously miss their do-it-all defender, they re-signed All-Pro special-teamer/hybrid linebacker Adrian Phillips in March and drafted Nasir Adderley in the second round a month later.
It’s unclear what will happen next with Melvin Gordon, but we now know one thing. The Chargers’ running back won’t be getting the extension he wants from Los Angeles this season.
Chargers GM Tom Telesco announced Sunday the team is postponing extension talks until after the season, according to Gilbert Manzano of the OC Register (Twitter link). The Chargers have been negotiating with Gordon this summer, although obviously they didn’t offer anything Gordon and his representatives were willing to accept. We heard back in July that the two sides were about $2-3MM apart in talks.
Those talks will now be tabled until the end of the season, if they’re ever brought back again at all. “When or if Melvin reports, he’ll play this season under his current contract, and we’ll just revisit it after the season,” Telesco said, via Eric D. Williams of ESPN.com (Twitter link). Telesco is playing hardball, and clearly isn’t going to budge. Just yesterday, word leaked that the Chargers had given the Wisconsin product permission to seek a trade.
That same report also indicated that Gordon hadn’t ruled out returning and playing out the final year of his rookie deal. He’s currently set to make $5.605MM under the fifth-year option. Of course even if Gordon is able to find a team willing to trade for him, they’d have to offer compensation that the Chargers want. He doesn’t have too much leverage at the moment, since if he doesn’t play this season his contract would simply toll to 2020.
Gordon had by far the best year of his career in 2018, and now he’s trying to cash in. The Chargers have remained firm in their stance and haven’t backed down, and appear content to enter the season with Austin Ekeler and second-year player Justin Jackson atop the depth chart. It’ll be interesting to see what Gordon does next, and how much time he’s willing to miss.
LeSean McCoy‘s stay on the open market didn’t last long. Released by the Bills yesterday, Shady immediately drew interest from four teams, and as Adam Schefter of ESPN.com reports, McCoy will sign with the Chiefs. Terez A. Paylor of Yahoo! Sports says it will be a one-year, $3MM pact with incentives that can increase the value to $4MM (Twitter link).
Paylor adds in a separate tweet that the Chargers offered McCoy a similar contract, but McCoy opted to head to Kansas City due to his familiarity with head coach Andy Reid and the club’s front office. McCoy spent the first four years of his career under Reid when both men were with the Eagles.
The Chiefs’ decision to sign McCoy suggests that they were not entirely comfortable with presumptive RB1 Damien Williams taking the lion’s share of the carries. McCoy and Williams — much to the chagrin of Williams fantasy owners — will likely share the load, with sixth-round rookie Darwin Thompson and second-year player Darrel Williams in support.
McCoy struggled in 2018, which turned out to be his final year in Buffalo, but the Bills’ O-line was a mess. The six-time Pro Bowler is definitely nearing the end of the road, but he did top 1,000 yards in each of his prior two seasons with the Bills, and with a dynamic offense around him and younger players to ease some of his burden, there is reason to believe that he can be productive for the Chiefs in 2019.
McCoy, 31, has 10,606 career rushing yards, good for 25th on the all-time list.
The Chiefs are going to face some competition if they plan on pursuing LeSean McCoy. McCoy was cut by the Bills earlier this morning, and we heard soon after that Kansas City had some interest.
The Chargers, Eagles, and Patriots are also showing strong early interest in McCoy, sources told Ian Rapoport of NFL Network (Twitter link). As Rapoport points out, the Chargers are interested because of the ongoing Melvin Gordon holdout. Just a few hours ago, it was reported that the Chargers had given Gordon permission to seek a trade. As of right now, Los Angeles is slated to roll with youngsters Austin Ekeler and Justin Jackson if Gordon doesn’t report for the regular season.
The Eagles traded for Jordan Howard earlier this offseason and drafted Miles Sanders in the second-round back in April, but they apparently aren’t satisfied completely with their running back group. The position was a weakness all of last year for them, so it makes sense why they’d want to bolster it as much as possible. McCoy, of course, started his career with the Eagles and spent his first six years in Philly, so there’s some familiarity there.
The Patriots have Sony Michel topping the depth chart, James White as their pass-catching specialist, and they also drafted Damien Harris in the third-round. All of these suitors are projected playoff teams, so it looks like McCoy will have his pick of contenders when he chooses where to play in 2019.