AFC Notes: Broncos, Chiefs, Raiders

Broncos S Justin Simmons will play on the one-year franchise tag in 2020 after he and the team failed to agree on a long-term deal before Wednesday’s deadline. Simmons made it clear that he believes a deal could have gotten done before the deadline.

“If the Broncos wanted to get a deal done, they would’ve,” Simmons said, via NFL.com “And so the reality is another year on the franchise tag is like a contract year all over again. Year 2 in Vic’s system with all the weapons that we have, I’m more than confident in myself and what I can do. Moving forward, we’ll just have to see. It’s a business decision on both ends. Whatever’s in my best interest and my family’s best interest is always what I’m going to do.”

Simmons is set to make $11.44 million on his one-year tender in 2020 and GM John Elway knows that Simmons will likely be worth signing to a massive contract down the road.

Chiefs

• Chiefs DT Chris Jones said his new five-year extension: “They put their best foot forward and they invested in a player that will win Defensive Player of the Year.” (Field Yates)
• Despite the fact he didn’t get a true signing bonus because of the pandemic, the Chiefs and Jones’ agents worked it out so he’d be advanced $1.5 million of his base salary in the coming days. (Mike Garafolo)

Raiders

Raiders GM Mike Mayock said he and HC Jon Gruden have been talking to others about how to beat the heat in Las Vegas.

“We’ve had some conversations with people who have coached [in Vegas] before, like Tony Sanchez who was at UNLV, and just asked about what time we have to be done practicing, or what can we do outside?” Mayock said, via Raiders.com. “The advantage we have, as opposed to UNLV, is that we have the grass fields outside, we have the indoor climate-controlled field, and we have a stadium. So, we really have three different places that we can rotate through, and based on what we heard, if we’re going to be outside, we probably have to be done by 10, 10:30 in the morning in July and August. I think we can figure that out because we have three different surfaces to practice on, but the harder part is we don’t even know what the deal is with training camp and the acclimation period.”