LA Chargers: Why Desmond King should and shouldn’t be traded

The LA Chargers should trade King for financial and draft flexibility going forward.

The Chargers’ salary cap situation undoubtedly gets trickier after 2020. King, along with Joey Bosa, Melvin Ingram, Keenan Allen, Hunter Henry, and others are free agents after the season. If the Chargers are playing Harris at slot corner, maybe the flexibility from trading King is simply greater than the role he could play.

Finding cheap draft talent has to be one of the top priorities for the Chargers before the brinks truck gets backed up for multiple players. Generally speaking, Tom Telesco has been good at finding talents in the mid to late rounds of drafts.

King was one of those late-round picks himself. If Telesco could flip him for a third or fourth-round pick and find himself another draft steal, it could really improve the flexibility of the team going forward.

Four-year contracts with for rookies are great ways to control the cap, especially for those that play a lot. No one knows what the Chargers might look like in three or four years, but trading a player that isn’t a position of need for a cheaper, younger position of need might be the tough decision the Chargers need to make to preserve viability as a contender.

There’s a lot of things to consider when debating whether or not to trade King. Trading him might signal a move to the future of the team. Trading him in a move up the draft or for a mid-round pick might give the team flexibility going forward.

Not trading him keeps the secondary depth chart loaded and signals a more win-now mentality when it comes to the defense. Moving him to safety is a possibility, as well as keeping him for general depth if certain players start to struggle.