The Chiefs’ title defense begins on Thursday, but it remains to be seen if they will have Chris Jones available for Week 1 or any point early in the campaign. Plenty of progress still needs to be made for an agreement to be reached between team and player in this situation.

Jones, who has one year remaining on his current pact and is due a base salary of $19.5MM in 2023, has been absent from the team throughout the offseason. That has resulted in a major accumulation of fines during the summer and the chance of just over $1MM in missed game checks per week if he continues to hold out. Jones, 29, has previously suggested he is willing to remain on the sidelines until Week 8, the latest point at which he can return to the field with a year of service time accruing.

Talks on an new deal have have ramped up recently, and the team remains confident that one will be worked out to some point. As NFL Network’s Ian Rapoport reports, however, the sides are still at an impasse and Jones is therefore absent for today’s practice. That points further to the the All-Pro being sidelined for the season opener and adding to his financial penalties. Jones has already racked up approximately $2MM in fines and missed out on a $500K workout bonus, and little clarity exists with respect to when he will be back in the fold.

Confirming the uncertainty on the team’s part, head coach Andy Reid said, “You’re never sure how it’s going to work out. You deal with too many people in this type of thing. These things can go any direction. I don’t want to spend too much time on it. We had 90 guys in the offseason that I was making sure were going in the right direction, and now we’re getting ready to play a game. That’s how I go about it” (h/t Dave Skretta of the Associated Press).

Jones has been seeking a deal similar (if not larger) in value to Aaron Donald‘s market-resetting extension signed last offseason. The $31.67MM AAV of that pact comfortably exceeds what the numerous extension-eligible DTs landed in recent months on their own deals, and the Chiefs are reportedly willing to offer Jones a contract which would place him in the vicinity of the other second-tier earners at the position. The four-time Pro Bowler, by contrast, is thought to be seeking a deal putting him behind only Donald in the pecking order.

In an informative breakdown of the situation, Over the Cap’s Jason Fitzgerald details the fact that the value of extension offers depend on whether or not they are viewed through the lens of new money or strictly total compensation including what is already owed. In Jones’ case, the former approach (which is standard in the NFL) yields an AAV of $27.5MM regarding the Chiefs’ reported three-year offer and a figure of $32.5MM per year with respect to the counter-offer of the same length.

Kansas City’s defense will look much different on the interior presuming Jones does indeed miss regular season action in 2023. Time has likely run out for Week 1 participation at this point, but his negotiations on an extension will no doubt remain a talking point well after Thursday’s contest if no deal is reached.

Despite Travis Kelce making a public plea for Chris Jones to return to the Chiefs, the star defensive tackle continues his holdout. Jones has reportedly been pushing for a contract that would approach or exceed Aaron Donald‘s $31.67MM average annual value. The Chiefs have reportedly countered with a contract that would pay him in the $22.5-$24MM range, similar to the contracts signed by Daron Payne, Jeffery Simmons, Dexter Lawrence and Quinnen Williams this offseason.

[RELATED: Chiefs DT Chris Jones Hints At Extended Holdout]

Mike Florio of ProFootballTalk.com has more insight into, and it sounds like Kansas City’s offer is a bit higher than those second-tier DT salaries. A source tells Florio that the organization is offering Jones a three-year, $74MM deal that would wipe out the $19.5MM the player is set to earn in 2023. $70MM of that money would be guaranteed for injury.

That would come in around a $24.67MM AAV. Florio writes that Jones would be willing to split the difference between the offer and Donald’s contract at around $28MM per year. So, that means there’s around a $10MM total difference in value between the two offers (a hypothetical three-year, $74MM offer from the Chiefs vs. a three-year, $84MM request from Jones).

There’s no true deadline for the two sides to agree to an extension, but the defensive tackle has hinted that he could sit out until Week 8 if he doesn’t receive a new deal. In that scenario, Jones would be facing significant fines.

It sounds like the Chiefs are preparing to be without Jones, who finished third in Defensive Player of the Year voting after compiling 15.5 sacks in 2022. Still, that hasn’t stopped teammates from pushing for his return. Kelce admitted during his recent podcast that he doesn’t understand the player’s hold out while pleading for the pass-rusher’s return.

“Chris, can you please come back?” Kelce said (via ESPN’s Adam Teicher). “You’re really scaring me, man. I don’t get it. You must know something that I don’t know because I just don’t get it. I really want to get another Super Bowl ring with you, brother. This is me bargaining you to just come back and play football for the Chiefs. Please, we need you. We need you bad, and I don’t know what the situation is.”

Meanwhile, head coach Andy Reid finally addressed Jones’ absence, telling reporters that he won’t criticize the player’s decision to hold out.

“Chris has chosen to go this route,” Reid said on Friday (via Teicher). “Some other guys have chosen to get their deals done and come in and play. I’m not here to criticize one way or the other. We’ve had a lot of success with the guys that we have, and we go with it.

“Other than that, I take the distractions and throw them out the door and let’s get on with what’s real.”

The Chiefs open the season on Thursday against the Lions. Unless the two sides can make up significant ground in negotiations, the Chiefs will be without their defensive leader for the start of their Super Bowl defense.

As the situations involving Odell Beckham Jr., Russell Wilson and others illustrated, team power brokers insisting no trade will take place can be a precursor to a trade indeed coming to fruition. As Chris Jones‘ Chiefs holdout heads toward two weeks, GM Brett Veach addressed the situation.

Jones is entering the final season of a four-year, $80MM Chiefs contract, but as the defensive tackle market shifted this offseason, the four-time Pro Bowler is now ninth in terms of AAV at his position. As Jones holds out, Veach expressed a desire for the All-Pro defensive tackle to finish his career in Kansas City.

“I think for all parties, I think the best resolution would be for him to end his career as a Chief — and get that financial security — and for us to do what we had set out to do, and that’s to work through last offseason with this offseason in mind and get some young guys, which we did that, and then focus on this year and getting Chris done,” Veach said, via the Kansas City Star’s Jesse Newell. “Hopefully we get this resolved, but we have no intentions of making a trade.”

Since Veach has been in the GM chair, the Chiefs have not shied away from big-ticket trades. In 2019, they swapped Dee Ford in a tag-and-trade deal with the 49ers. A month later, they were on the other end of a tag-and-trade transaction — the Frank Clark deal with the Seahawks. In 2021, the Chiefs put together a trade package headlined by a first-round pick for Orlando Brown Jr. Last year’s Tyreek Hill trade — for a five-asset Dolphins package — is the most pertinent to the Jones matter.

The Chiefs begun negotiations with Hill on a third contract early in the 2022 offseason. Although Veach has since cited the team’s desire to balance out their roster around Patrick Mahomes‘ current contract, the organization had another Hill extension on the radar. But Davante Adams‘ $28MM-per-year Raiders deal changed the All-Pro deep threat’s asking price. Hill said he did not need to be the NFL’s highest-paid wideout to stay in Kansas City, but the Chiefs shopped him in a quick process that ended with the likely Hall of Famer in Miami. One of the team’s reasons for trading Hill: Jones’ third contract.

“You have to keep in mind that when we did make that move with Tyreek, one of the determining factors was because there was an expected Chris Jones deal,” Veach said. “And so, to do [a] Tyreek [extension], there was a concern of, ‘Would we be able to do Chris?’ “And so that was a moment of time, and it was before the draft, that we hit the reset button. And we’re like, ‘You know, it’s really hard to trade a player the magnitude of Tyreek Hill.’ But we’re following that up with someone just as significant and on the defensive side.”

Hill soon signed a position-record contract with the Dolphins, a $30MM-per-year extension that includes an inflated final-season salary that ballooned the AAV to that place. Jones also wants a contract in the $30MM-AAV neighborhood, seeking money closer to the Aaron Donald range ($31.7MM per year) than the recently established Quinnen Williams–Jeffery Simmons–Dexter Lawrence–Daron Payne tier ($22-$24MM per year). The Chiefs want him closer to that group than Donald.

“It wouldn’t be as good as one with [him], and I think we certainly acknowledge that,” Veach said of a Chiefs 2023 roster that does not include Jones. “I mean, he’s the guy that makes everything tick. I think that’s apparent to us, and that’s why — going into the offseason and even to where we are now — that’s why our mindset is to continue to work hard to get something done with him, because that’s how we feel about him.

“… He’s a great player, and he wants a big contract. He deserves a big contract, and I don’t think there’s any surprises in that regard. But there’s just some hurdles we have to work through in regards to how we can keep this thing going for the short and long term. But we’ve never wavered on, ‘This is a guy that we want to exhaust all of our efforts to get done.’

Veach, who has been with the Chiefs throughout Andy Reid‘s tenure, has built the team’s roster around John Dorsey-era draftees Jones, Mahomes and Travis Kelce. Core performers like Hill, Clark, Brown, Justin Houston and Tyrann Mathieu have shuttled through western Missouri during the franchise’s peak period. This is not the first time Veach has spoken at length about the talks, but after the previous round of comments indicated plenty of time remained to hammer out a deal before training camp, Jones has become the rare 2020s player to stage a holdout.

Jones, 29, has accumulated more than $600K in fines during this holdout, one that accompanies Nick Bosa and Zack Martin‘s efforts. Like Bosa with the 49ers, Jones is firmly in the Chiefs’ plans. How high will the team be willing to go to end this impasse?

One of three star linemen amid holdouts, Chris Jones has now incurred more than $600K in fines from the Chiefs. In an effort to curb holdouts, the 2020 CBA prevents the team from waiving these penalties. But Jones has stood his ground, remaining away from the defending Super Bowl champions’ training camp.

This offseason effectively cemented the second tier of the defensive tackle market. Daron Payne, Jeffery Simmons, Dexter Lawrence and Quinnen Williams signed deals worth between $22.5-$24MM per year. That remains well south of the outlier pact the Rams authorized for Aaron Donald, who is tied to a defender-record $31.7MM-per-year contract. With Jones using a first-team All-Pro season — as the best defender on a Super Bowl-winning team — to make a strong case as the second-best D-tackle in the game, he has understandably sought Donald-neighborhood money.

That has complicated the situation with the Chiefs, who have their other stars — Patrick Mahomes and Travis Kelce — on team-friendly accords. The Chiefs want Jones’ contract to come in around the price point established by the Simmons and Williams deals, Albert Breer of SI.com notes. Jones has been connected to a $30MM-AAV ask, establishing a sizable gap in these negotiations. While previous reports suggested a deal was close and could be done by the start of camp, the Chiefs have worked without their best defensive player for nearly two weeks now.

The four-time Pro Bowler, who also skipped minicamp, has some leverage against the Chiefs. Since Kansas City franchise-tagged Jones in 2020, it would be costlier to unholster the tag again in 2024. At $33MM-plus, that tag number would be borderline untenable for the team. The Mahomes and Kelce deals came to pass in 2020, with it appearing the two offensive superstars accepted Chiefs-friendly accords to help the team reach more player-friendly terms with Jones. With Javon Hargrave and the above-referenced D-tackle quartet moving the market this year, Jones’ $20MM AAV has dropped to ninth since the July 2020 agreement.

Most players who have engaged in high-profile contract talks have either reported to camp and participated or staged hold-ins. It would make more financial sense for Jones, Zack Martin and Nick Bosa to show up and not practice, adding intrigue to the All-Pros’ decisions to stay away. Each player is being fined $50K per day while not in camp. Jones is going into his age-29 season, which may make these negotiations his last chance at top-market money. The holdout suggests the eighth-year DT is proceeding like that is the case.

The Chiefs won a Super Bowl after letting Tyrann Mathieu walk and trading Tyreek Hill, bowing out on extension talks with the latter when he wanted Davante Adams-level dough in March 2022. But they needed All-Pro efforts from Kelce and Jones to win another title. Jones looks to be betting his absence on a young Kansas City defense — one now depending on 2022 and ’23 first-round defensive ends, George Karlaftis and Felix Anudike-Uzomah, in the wake of the Frank Clark cut — will be enough to convince the team to increase its offer to bring him back into the fold. Conversely, the Chiefs have the leverage of Jones’ fines running past $2MM before the season as a tool on their side.

Following a season in which he ranked as the league’s top interior defensive lineman, according to Pro Football Focus (subscription required), Chris Jones has been seeking a new, top contract from the Chiefs. According to Adam Schefter of ESPN, Jones “did not report with the rest of the team to training camp” today as “the two sides remain ‘far apart’ on a new deal.”

A former second-round pick out of Mississippi State, Jones set himself up beautifully coming out of his rookie deal by delivering two strong seasons in 2018 and 2019. Kansas City resorted to a franchise tag before eventually agreeing to extend Jones on a four-year, $80MM contract. Once again, the Chiefs began exploring the option of an extension early in the offseason this year. Jones hasn’t made it any easier for the team as, once again, he’s delivered one of the best performances of his career the season before a contract year.

In the years since Jones’s second contract, the defensive tackle market has markedly improved. In anticipation of an eventual negotiation, Jones skipped the team’s mandatory minicamp, costing himself approximately $100K in fines. At that point, it became clear that Jones was willing to pay to make his point, but a hold-out of training camp still seemed a long way away, considering the options limited by the 2020 CBA. The most drastic measure expected at the time was a potential hold-in, wherein Jones would attend training camp but not participate to his full ability.

Jones’s expectations weren’t unrealistic. Despite being ranked as the best, he wasn’t necessarily seeking to out-earn Rams star defensive tackle Aaron Donald. Donald’s contract is leaps and bounds ahead of the next-closest competition, so Jones sought to, at least, become the league’s second highest-paid defensive tackle. An interview with general manager Brett Veach made it sound like conversations were going well, indicating that things would likely get done “right before (or) right during the first start of camp,” a sentiment echoed by ESPN’s Jeff Darlington who thought it “likely” that the two sides would reach an agreement before camp.

Apparently, Jones agrees with the “start of camp” as a time to get things done. Holding out of training camp shows just how serious Jones is about not playing out the last year of his contract. According to Field Yates of ESPN, each day that Jones misses will leave him subject to almost $50K of fines.

Perhaps, if the Chiefs and Jones were closer in their negotiations, Jones wouldn’t be taking such drastic measures, but a camp hold-out truly emphasizes how far apart the two sides are. If Jones is going to incur daily fines, he’s going to expect a deal that makes those fines inconsequential.