Chiefs Gave Chris Jones $6.75M In Incentives To End Holdout

According to Pro Football Talk, the new one-year deal the Chiefs gave DT Chris Jones to end his contract holdout includes $6.75 million of incentives. 

It pushes the total maximum value of the deal over $25 million when added to Jones’ $19.5 million base salary and subtracting the game check he forfeited for missing Week 1. 

The full breakout of the incentives includes: 

• $1 million for 35 percent of the snaps
• $1 million for 50 percent of the snaps
• $1.25 million for 10 sacks
• $500,000 for 15 sacks
• $1 million for first-team All-Pro and a Super Bowl appearance
• $2 million for winning defensive player of the year and a Super Bowl. 

The deal does not include a no-tag clause, meaning Kansas City has that available to them should they choose to use it to keep Jones from hitting free agency in 2024. However, the cost of the tag would be 120 percent of his 2023 cap hit which comes out to north of $30 million. 

Jones’ holdout ended up costing him in the neighborhood of $3.6 million including fines and the forfeited game check. 

He had been seeking a deal that put him in the same neighborhood as Rams DT Aaron Donald at $31.6 million a year but the rest of the defensive tackle market topped out at $25 million a year this offseason and Kansas City was unwilling to bridge the gap. 

Jones, 28, is a former second-round pick of the Chiefs back in 2016 out of Mississippi State. He played out the final year of his four-year, $6.231 million contract and made a base salary of $1.19 million in the final year of the agreement.

The Chiefs franchised Jones before eventually signing him a four-year, $85M extension that included $60 million guaranteed. 

Jones is entering the final year of that deal and is set to make a base salary of $19.5 million in 2023. 

In 2022, Jones appeared in all 17 games for the Chiefs and recorded 44 total tackles, 17 tackles for loss, 15.5 sacks, two forced fumbles, a recovery and four passes defended.

We’ll have more on Jones as the news is available.