[Kansas City.com] Will Shields, who’s been through four coaches, seven starting quarterbacks and 207 straight games in the starting lineup, is staying in Kansas City.
Shields has agreed to a four-year contract extension that will allow him to retire with the Chiefs, his agent, Joe Linta, said Monday.
“They were very accommodating people,” Linta said. “Everybody’s pretty happy.”
As the deadline approached for teams to get under the NFL salary cap earlier this month, several media outlets reported that Shields had been cut.
But the Chiefs kept him on the roster, then reworked a more cap-friendly, front-loaded deal that Linta said would let Shields retire after 2006 without having to pay back a portion of the bonus.
“He’s only obligated to the Chiefs for this year and will have the option to decide on retirement after this season,” Linta said.
“He took a slight pay cut to stay with the Chiefs. I think his family loves it there and he likes his buddies on the team. We kind of analyzed what he’d get on the open market, and when you’re 34 years old, you’re probably not going to get the kind of deal (Seahawks mega-millions guard) Steve Hutchinson is going to get at this point. We were going to work to try and get it done here, and Carl (Peterson) and Denny (Thum) did the same.”
