The announcement of Charles Omenihu’s suspension last week may have given star defensive lineman Chris Jones some leverage in his negotiations for an extension with the Kansas City Chiefs, but nothing is certain at this point. Jones is still being fined for each day of training camp that he misses at a rate of $50,000 per day, so his holdout from practices at Missouri Western State University comes at a steep price that ensures Kansas City’s front office still holds all the cards.
Last week when we looked at Jones’ accrued penalties he was sitting at somewhere between $400,000 and $500,000 owed back to the Chiefs for his absence. The $400,000 figure was calculated assuming that the fines started at midnight on Sunday, July 23, a day after Kansas City’s veterans reported to St. Joseph on July 22 and that he has not been accruing penalties for days that the Chiefs do not practice.
Now, though, even the calculation that assumes the most lenient punishment for his truancy has ballooned to $600,000 for 12 days of workouts missed, which is no small sum considering that Kansas City has not even begun its preseason exhibition schedule.
The more severe estimation, which sat at $500,000 last week, operates on the premise that fines are also being levied for days that the Chiefs do not practice. This would put him at $750,000 for 15 total absences from training camp in St. Joseph from July 23 until August 6.
Jones’ total cap number for the 2023 season remains $28,291,668 and these figures are starting to eat into his total pay for the year in a more significant capacity than they were last week. Now, Jones is set to effectively forfeit somewhere between two and three percent of his total cap number, with no sign of a resolution on the horizon.
The portion of Kansas City’s roster that decided to report to training camp, some 89 of the Chiefs’ 90 total players under contract, have been hard at work preparing for a championship defense while Jones figures out how to extract more money from the team’s delicate salary cap.
For his part, Jones is already the second-highest-paid player on the team, behind reigning MVP Patrick Mahomes. Jones makes about $6 million more than Joe Thuney, who commands the third-highest cap number, and his pay nearly doubles that of Travis Kelce, who accounts for $14,801,994 on the Chiefs’ books.
