Insider Provides Status Update on KC Chiefs DT Chris Jones Contract Negotiations

Jeff Darlington provided a brief update on where things stand between the Chiefs and star DT Chris Jones on a contract extension.

The Kansas City Chiefs are days away from players reporting to their 2023 training camp in St. Joseph, MO, but the contract status of star defensive tackle Chris Jones remains a situation that needs to be sorted out.

Jones, who finished third in Defensive Player of the Year voting a season ago after recording 15.5 sacks during the regular season, is under contract for the 2023 campaign with a salary cap hit of just over $28 million. He's set to hit the free agent market next offseason, though, and the price of a potential franchise tag wouldn't be very palatable for Kansas City. It would behoove the team to get an extended deal ironed out soon, and many are maintaining a positive outlook on those odds.

In a recent appearance on ESPN's SportsCenter program, NFL reporter Jeff Darlington spoke a bit about the ongoing process between the Chiefs and Jones. Citing an extension as something the team is optimistic it will get done before camp, Darlington continued by explaining the cap benefits of a new deal kicking in. Here's what he had to say: 

"The Chiefs would like to give him that long-term extension. I'm told that they are still optimistic that this will get done — likely before training camp — for Chris Jones. And this is significant for a number of reasons, not just the contract itself. The Chiefs right now are just barely below the salary cap, one of the highest salary caps right now in the league. If they can do that deal with Jones, they can ultimately bring this number down."

Darlington's point about the Chiefs' salary cap situation is very accurate, as the NFLPA's public salary cap report lists general manager Brett Veach as having barely over $1M in wiggle room to work with. Extending Jones and lowering his 2023 cap hit would undoubtedly create some more space under the cap, which could be used in a variety of ways. Kansas City could carry the money over into the regular season, it could execute a trade at some point or the DeAndre Hopkins sweepstakes could heat up more than they already have. A Jones extension has the potential to offer that flexibility. 

The last time Jones signed an extension with the Chiefs was in mid-July of 2020, not long before the team was set to arrive for training camp. If a similar timeline is followed this time around, an extension could be merely a handful of days — or a couple of weeks, at most — away. Last month at the team's Super Bowl LVII ring ceremony, Veach expressed the same optimism on a deal being reached:

"Listen, we have a long history together and we have a great relationship with his agent. I mean, these things usually get worked out right before [or] right during the first start of camp so we anticipate the same, and we'll see how it goes."

Of course, optimism doesn't always end with a pen being put to paper, but it's clear that Veach and company want to get something worked out. That, paired with Jones's love for the organization, bodes mostly well as the football world slowly emerges from the dog days of the NFL offseason.

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