KANSAS CITY, Mo. — After 51 days without Chris Jones, the Chiefs finally have their defensive star in the fold for the 2023 season.
The impasse between Jones and the Chiefs cleared Monday afternoon as the two sides agreed on a new one-year contract for the All-Pro defensive tackle covering the 2023 season.
Chiefs general manager Brett Veach confirmed the new contract in a statement released Monday afternoon.
“Chris is an elite player in this league, and over the last seven years, he’s really developed into a leader on our team,” Veach said in the statement. “He’s been instrumental to our success and Super Bowl championship runs and it was a priority for us to keep him in a Chiefs uniform. I’d like to thank Chris and his representation, Michael and Jason Katz, for their desire and patience to get this done. Through this process two things were obvious, Chris wanted to be a Chief, and the Katz brothers worked diligently on his behalf.”
The deal includes incentives designed to help Jones boost his pay for the 2023 season. Terms of the new contract were not immediately available. It was not immediately known if the Chiefs agreed not to use the franchise tag on Jones during next year’s offseason.
Jones was set to earn a base salary of $19.5 million during the 2023 campaign and also had a $500,000 workout bonus. That contract also included an incentive of $1.25 million for reaching 10 sacks in a season, a milestone he met last year. Jones also carries a cap hit of $7 million based on a restructured bonus paid in 2021 that was prorated over the next three seasons.
Jones received fines totaling $2.2 million for missing training camp during his holdout. The club cannot waive those fines. Jones also forfeited nearly $1.1 million in weekly pay last week for not reporting to the club before the first game of the season. Jones will now receive 17 game checks instead of the 18 normally paid during the regular season. It is up to the Chiefs whether they want to pay him his $500,000 workout bonus tied to participating in offseason programs.
Salary-cap tracking website Spotrac showed the Chiefs with approximately $11.8 million in cap space before the new contract with Jones. His $19.5 million base salary for 2023 did not count toward the salary cap after the club placed him on the reserve/did not report list.
It is unclear if the Chiefs negotiated a lower base salary for Jones or restructured the contracts of other players in order to accommodate Jones under the salary cap.
