Brett Veach Sheds Light on Chris Jones Contract Negotiations With Chiefs
Defensive tackle Chris Jones continues to hold out from Kansas City Chiefs training camp and with a preseason game on the horizon, the star lineman has yet to land a contract extension with the only NFL franchise he's ever known.
Jones, who turned 29 in July, is reportedly seeking a deal that would make him the second-highest-paid defensive tackle in the league on a per-year salary basis. With a large gap existing between Aaron Donald's $31.67 million average and Quinnen Williams's $24M mark, there's quite a bit of space for Jones to file in somewhere in between along the way. As time has gone on, though, many have wondered just how high Jones's camp has gone in terms of demands during negotiations.
On Monday, Chiefs general manager Brett Veach spoke about the Jones situation and provided some updates on how things are — or aren't, in some cases — going. Per Jesse Newell of The Kansas City Star, Veach acknowledged that Jones deserves a hefty payday:
“He’s a great player, and he wants a big contract. He deserves a big contract, and I don’t think there’s any surprises in that regard,” Veach told The Star on Monday. “But there’s just some hurdles we have to work through in regards to how we can keep this thing going for the short- and long-term. But we’ve never wavered on, ‘This is a guy that we want to exhaust all of our efforts to get done,’ because that’s how much we think of him.”
A year ago, the Chiefs were staring into the future and saw a world where multiple high-level pieces would be taking up a scary portion of the team's salary cap. Wide receiver Tyreek Hill, specifically, was one of them. Veach said that when Kansas City ultimately decided to trade Hill to the Miami Dolphins and allow them to pay him a lucrative contract, the franchise did so with Jones in mind:
“You have to keep in mind that when we did make that move with Tyreek, one of the determining factors was because there was an expected Chris Jones deal,” Veach said. “And so, to do Tyreek, there was a concern of, ‘Would we be able to do Chris?’
“And so that was a moment of time, and it was before the draft, that we hit the reset button. And we’re like, ‘You know, it’s really hard to trade a player the magnitude of Tyreek Hill.’ But we’re following that up with someone just as significant and on the defensive side.”
Nearly 17 full months later, however, the benefit of that added long-term flexibility has yet to manifest itself in the form of Jones getting taken care of. Veach said in Newell's article that the team doesn't intend to trade Jones and does want to have him "end his career as a Chief," which is consistent with the franchise's messaging in recent months. As far as the line of communication is concerned, Veach admitted that things have slowed down but should speed up again soon:
“You reach this point where you, I think, both parties want to just kind of take a deep breath and reset a little bit. And then (the talks) become less frequent, but at the same time, I mean, the start of the season is Sept. 7,” Veach said. “So by nature, they’re gonna have to heat up again. And like I said, that’s why we’re still optimistic.”
What does this mean for Chris Jones's contract negotiations with the Chiefs?
With each passing day of practice missed, Jones is losing out on $50,000. That may not sound like a lot in the grand scheme of things but with double-digit days of workouts already in the books, the first-team All-Pro is already on the books for over half a million dollars just in mandatory fines. That difference can be made up somewhere along the way in a new deal, but it's far from chump change — even at Jones's current or expected future salary.
Last week, Dianna Russini of ESPN reported that the Chiefs were sort of blindsided when Jones didn't show up for the team's Super Bowl LVII ring ceremony. With that said, she also added that she believed a deal would still get done and the Chiefs were also optimistic despite things looking bleaker and bleaker every day. Veach expressed that same positive outlook on Monday, which bodes well for one of the highest-profile contract situations of the summer.
Based on his play last year, in a vacuum, Jones is worth a deal with an average salary close to or even matching Donald's. Contracts aren't in vacuums, though. The 2022 season was his only career season with that level of production and he's going to be 30 years old by the time his extension kicks in. The team has every right to campaign for what it wants, and Jones has the same rights on his end as he's coming off a year that saw him land third in Defensive Player of the Year voting. With Veach's comments now providing a runway for the final few weeks before the regular season begins, all eyes turn to the future of the best defensive player the Chiefs have had in years.
