As the Broncos’ most valuable defensive lineman, Dre’Mont Jones would be a fool to play at a discount for an NFL team that hasn’t won diddly in years. It will take more than an empty promise of winning the Super Bowl to keep him here. Jones will follow the money, even if it leads him straight out of Denver.
Asked Wednesday if he wants to be a member of the Broncos for the long run, Jones got salty.
“I am here right now,” Jones said.
His words were blunt and hard enough to leave a mark.
Jones speaks the way he tackles, mercilessly and without diplomacy.
The bag, not the ring, is the thing in the NFL.
That’s not a complaint or a criticism. It’s an acknowledgment of reality.
One overlooked aspect of Russell Wilson’s painfully slow start with the Broncos is there is yet to be any indication he will be a quarterback who can lure free agents to Denver, or encourage teammates to take a hometown discount in contract negotiations, by appealing to championship dreams.
Didn’t I hear from Broncomaniacs quick to kick linebacker Bradley Chubb to the curb that this team needed the money to sign Jones, who can be an unrestricted free agent at season’s end?
So where’s the contract extension? Was the bank closed during the bye week? Rather than get down to business with Jones’ agent, did general manager George Paton go hang out in Cabo with Wilson and Ciara?
Paton can blah, blah, blah until he’s orange and blue in the face about how the Broncos would’ve moved Chubb to Miami at the NFL trade deadline for a first-round draft choice in 2023, regardless of whether Denver’s record was 3-5 or 5-3.
The future commitment to winning, however, doesn’t really mean a thing unless Greg Penner and the crazy-rich Waltons show Jones the money saved by offloading Chubb.
In the Broncos locker room, my Denver Post colleague Parker Gabriel asked if the erasure of future financial obligations to Chubb might have positive implications for Jones.
‘I don’t know. Maybe,” Jones replied.
Is there security in hearing Paton laud him as a core player for the Broncos?
“I view my standing with the franchise as, this is Dre going into Year 4, that’s all I can say,” said Jones.
He knows very well the only truly accurate way loyalty in the NFL can be measured is with money, and I applaud him for taking a bottom-line approach to the game. Football is a tough business. If this tough 2022 season has taught the Broncos anything, it’s that the first duty for any player in the Not For Long is to get paid.
For all his bold talk of winning multiple championships in Denver, Wilson made certain to get his $245 million contract extension before throwing his first touchdown pass or playing a snap that mattered for the Broncos.
After Paton decided Chubb was expendable with a make-or-break game against Tennessee and 250-pound running back Derrick Henry next on the schedule, former Denver teammates were delighted when Chubb signed a $110 million contract extension with the Dolphins.
We all know the Broncos won Super Bowl 50 with defense. It was a defense that quarterback Peyton Manning had a huge role in building. Aqib Talib, T.J. Ward and DeMarcus Ware all signed as free agents with Denver after Manning joined the team.
On the day Manning retired in 2016, John Elway, the general manager who wisely took a chance on a 30-something quarterback with serious injury issues, lauded PFM for a contribution as great as all the touchdown passes he threw for Denver.
“He’s made my job easy,” Elway said. “Bottom line is I said, ‘Mr. (Pat) Bowlen wants to win championships and you get to play with Peyton Manning.’ They said, ‘Where do we sign?’ And that’s really what happened and that’s why we’re able to put these great teams together.”
When the Walton ownership group relied on Paton’s expertise and signed Wilson to a contract extension worth nearly a quarter of a billion dollars, there was a reasonable expectation that added value in the deal would be talent an elite quarterback could lure to the Broncos.
At this point, with Russ struggling to cook, why would any offensive tackle headed toward free agency put Denver atop his wish list? And if Sean Payton wants to get back into coaching, might it make more sense for him to join forces with Justin Herbert in Los Angeles than with Wilson in Denver?
Jones, a third-round draft choice out of Ohio State in 2019, is on pace to produce double-digit sacks for the first time in his NFL career. In a contract year, his timing is impeccable. Of course, the Broncos could choose to retain Jones’ services by franchise-tagging him, a move that can be economically sound for the team but seldom results in the warm, fuzzy feeling of being appreciated by the player.
Loyalty to the orange and blue?
Please. Don’t be naïve.
Winning earns respect. Unsuccessful football teams don’t earn hometown discounts.
Jones will follow the money and go play wherever the bag takes him.
