Steve Spagnuolo Discusses Chiefs’ Plan for Chris Jones on Sunday

Kansas City's defensive coordinator touched on the state of his unit and the team's potential plan for defensive tackle Chris Jones in Week 2.

The Kansas City Chiefs got star defensive tackle Chris Jones back on the practice field on Wednesday afternoon, which was a positive step towards the four-time Pro Bowler and recent All-Pro making his season debut against the Jacksonville Jaguars this weekend.

Jones, who is back with Kansas City on a revised one-year deal after a lengthy holdout, didn't play in Week 1 against the Detroit Lions but watched the club's banner-raising ceremony from a suite instead. News of his new contract broke on Monday, and the 29-year-old spoke on Wednesday about the process and why he's happy to return. 

With a few days of practice in advance of this weekend's game, the Chiefs' hope is that Jones will be in good enough shape to play in a pivotal AFC battle between two of the conference's best teams. Defensive coordinator Steve Spagnuolo said he didn't want to put a number on a potential snap count, but he does anticipate Jones playing. He also elaborated on the team's plan for the next handful of days. 

"We'll get through today and tomorrow and see where he is," Spagnuolo said. "I'll be curious to talk to him and see how he feels [with] conditioning. That's the biggest thing, right? It's the conditioning. The one thing we don't want to do, that we want to protect against as best as we can, is to not put him in a situation where we get him hurt. We certainly don't want that. And we all know, look, he hasn't had a lot of work up until this point. We'll get him as much as we can and then try to be smart on game day."

This past season, Jones was far and away Kansas City's best defensive player and doubled as the NFL's best interior defensive lineman. Notching 15.5 sacks in the regular season and playing better run defense under defensive line coach Joe Cullen, Jones finished third in Defensive Player of the Year voting and was excellent throughout the Chiefs' playoff run to Super Bowl LVII. 

With all of that said, the former Mississippi State standout did play a career-high 80% of available regular-season snaps in the process, which put his conditioning under serious stress. Even during the holdout that lasted longer than many expected, Spagnuolo says the team was never worried about its second- or third-best player returning at anything less than peak form from a physical standpoint. 

"We were saying this when he wasn't here that the one thing we knew when, hopefully, he did get back... we knew he'd be in shape," Spagnuolo said. "He's not the big, fat guy like some of the big guys that are in there and you worry about that. Listen, he's the real deal. He's blessed with some talent, so he looks like he's in good shape to me." 

Now that Jones is likely entering the fold once again — even in a potentially limited capacity — Spagnuolo's defensive front will receive a massive boost. The defense managed to hold the Lions' offense to just 14 points last Thursday, although it also struggled to generate consistent pressure on quarterback Jared Goff and came away with just one sack on the night. With Sunday's game approaching, Spagnuolo praised his unit for the job it did without Jones as he now looks forward to officially bringing him back. 

"Listen, it was a group effort," Spagnuolo said. "It was a unit thing that we talked about, we knew that we had to click on all cylinders and execution to have some good plays. That was a good football team that we went against, a good offense. Like I said, I was proud overall. There were still some things we need to clean up.  The disappointing things were the missed tackles in the fourth quarter and, really, one third down red zone play. It might have been a four-point play, [which] might have been the difference in the game. That's how close it was." 

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