Post by joemcrugby on Jul 25, 2023 15:13:21 GMT -7
Starting this one up with a banger. I can’t say that I’m upset as it makes the Ekeler “issue” look like a tempest in a teapot in comparison. Like Donald with the Rams, Jones makes the Chefs defense go.
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Chiefs defensive tackle Chris Jones is incurring fines of $50,000 per day, so clearly his negotiation with the Chiefs isn’t in a very good place—no NFL player would even get to three days into camp, and run that meter up to $150,000 without having a serious issue with the tone of talks.
What’s the problem? My stab at it is that the two sides have an Aaron Donald issue.
Last March, at the age of 30, Donald had a contract with three years left on it torn up, and redone completely, which is close to unheard of (Deshaun Watson’s Browns deal is the only other recent example, and that was after a trade). Donald got $95 million over three years, putting him $10 million per year ahead of DeForest Buckner, who had been the highest-paid defensive tackle in football, making $21 million per.
Since, the market has treated the Donald deal as an outlier. Commanders star Daron Payne did an extension at $22.5 million per year in March, an incremental bump over what Buckner got in 2020. The Giants’ Dexter Lawrence landed at $21.875 million per year in May, Tennessee’s Jeffery Simmons got $23.5 million in June and the Jets’ Quinnen Williams received $24 million per year earlier this month.
Simmons and Williams are right there in the top five or so at the position. But Jones, over the past five years, has been the clear No. 2 to Donald.
So how do you value him, as the Chiefs’ defensive counterpoint to Patrick Mahomes? The question coming out of the Donald deal was whether the market would catch up to what Donald got or ignore it—with Donald having wielded the option of retirement as leverage in his talks with the Rams. The answer is that the market largely ignored it, creating the same sort of issue that existed a decade ago, when Calvin Johnson’s number was so far past the next highest-paid receiver that it poisoned negotiations with other stars at the position.
The solution, then, will be hard to dig out of if Jones wants to be paid like Donald, and the Chiefs want to pay him like Simmons or Williams. He also has the advantage over those two of having already gotten a massive second contract, which, at least on paper, would position him better to hold the line. The Athletic reported Monday that Jones wants $30 million, and while taking someone’s average per year can be a moving target, and there are different ways to look at the proposals, I’ve heard, too, that it’s right in that ballpark.
That leaves the Chiefs, for now, without their best defensive player. It’s July, so it’s not the end of the world. But the longer Jones waits to show, the more the temperature gets turned up on this one. There’s also an exorbitant price on tagging him again—$33.95 million—in 2024, which would be a motivator for the team to get something done now.
The simple fact that he’s not there already makes it very, very tough to predict an outcome on this one, or the impact it’ll have on Kansas City’s season. So we’ll see.
www.si.com/nfl/2023/07/25/chris-jones-holdout-with-chiefs-includes-aaron-donald
_____
Chiefs defensive tackle Chris Jones is incurring fines of $50,000 per day, so clearly his negotiation with the Chiefs isn’t in a very good place—no NFL player would even get to three days into camp, and run that meter up to $150,000 without having a serious issue with the tone of talks.
What’s the problem? My stab at it is that the two sides have an Aaron Donald issue.
Last March, at the age of 30, Donald had a contract with three years left on it torn up, and redone completely, which is close to unheard of (Deshaun Watson’s Browns deal is the only other recent example, and that was after a trade). Donald got $95 million over three years, putting him $10 million per year ahead of DeForest Buckner, who had been the highest-paid defensive tackle in football, making $21 million per.
Since, the market has treated the Donald deal as an outlier. Commanders star Daron Payne did an extension at $22.5 million per year in March, an incremental bump over what Buckner got in 2020. The Giants’ Dexter Lawrence landed at $21.875 million per year in May, Tennessee’s Jeffery Simmons got $23.5 million in June and the Jets’ Quinnen Williams received $24 million per year earlier this month.
Simmons and Williams are right there in the top five or so at the position. But Jones, over the past five years, has been the clear No. 2 to Donald.
So how do you value him, as the Chiefs’ defensive counterpoint to Patrick Mahomes? The question coming out of the Donald deal was whether the market would catch up to what Donald got or ignore it—with Donald having wielded the option of retirement as leverage in his talks with the Rams. The answer is that the market largely ignored it, creating the same sort of issue that existed a decade ago, when Calvin Johnson’s number was so far past the next highest-paid receiver that it poisoned negotiations with other stars at the position.
The solution, then, will be hard to dig out of if Jones wants to be paid like Donald, and the Chiefs want to pay him like Simmons or Williams. He also has the advantage over those two of having already gotten a massive second contract, which, at least on paper, would position him better to hold the line. The Athletic reported Monday that Jones wants $30 million, and while taking someone’s average per year can be a moving target, and there are different ways to look at the proposals, I’ve heard, too, that it’s right in that ballpark.
That leaves the Chiefs, for now, without their best defensive player. It’s July, so it’s not the end of the world. But the longer Jones waits to show, the more the temperature gets turned up on this one. There’s also an exorbitant price on tagging him again—$33.95 million—in 2024, which would be a motivator for the team to get something done now.
The simple fact that he’s not there already makes it very, very tough to predict an outcome on this one, or the impact it’ll have on Kansas City’s season. So we’ll see.
www.si.com/nfl/2023/07/25/chris-jones-holdout-with-chiefs-includes-aaron-donald
