Chris Jones is the sun. As the Chiefs pursue another trip to the Super Bowl this season, every member of the team’s defense — coordinator Steve Spagnuolo, veterans and even rookies — knows their work revolves around Jones, the All-Pro pass rusher.
Jones, the franchise’s longest-tenured defender, has the duty and the burden of being the one most responsible for elevating the Chiefs defense, a role he fully accepted this past offseason when he secured a five-year, $158.75 million contract, including $60 million guaranteed.
Nine months later, a moment encapsulating the Chiefs’ ongoing grind this season came in Friday’s game against the rival Las Vegas Raiders. The first snap of the second quarter featured what often happens to Jones: He was double-teamed by left tackle Kolton Miller and left guard Jordan Meredith. The Raiders finished the play with a 43-yard completion. The next snap, Jones moved to a different spot on the Chiefs’ defensive line. Once again, Jones was double-teamed, this time by rookie center Jackson Powers-Johnson and right guard Andre James. The Raiders finished the play with a 25-yard completion, putting the ball at the Chiefs’ 4-yard line.
Sensing another sluggish moment in the unit’s performance, a frequent occurrence throughout November, Jones lit into his teammates, shouting loud enough that referee Clay Martin’s microphone picked up his voice.
Jones’ teammates responded. The Raiders didn’t score a touchdown. Instead, they went backward. Before the third-and-goal snap, Jones finally found what he was looking for on the Raiders’ drive: a one-on-one matchup. Rushing against right guard Dylan Parham, Jones pressured quarterback Aidan O’Connell in just two seconds. The Arrowhead Stadium crowd roared when Jones chased O’Connell from behind to sack him for a 5-yard loss, forcing the Raiders to kick a field goal.
“Man, it’s been eight weeks, OK,” Jones said of snapping his sack drought. “I’ve felt like I’ve been in a cave.”
Even during the unpleasant streak, Jones did plenty to try to stabilize the Chiefs defense, a unit that has struggled in the second half of the season because of an injury to cornerback Jaylen Watson and a lack of production from the traditional four-man pass rush.
In his ninth season at age 30, Jones is not on pace to replicate the impressive statistics he had last season (29 quarterback hits, 10 1/2 sacks and four pass breakups) — or the best statistical year of his career in 2022 (29 quarterback hits, 15 1/2 sacks, four pass breakups and two forced fumbles). The Chiefs, though, understand that Jones’ contributions this season are perhaps even more valuable than what he accomplished last season.
“Anybody who is really involved in the game and watches it knows that numbers can lie,” linebacker Drue Tranquill said of Jones. “Chris is the best one-on-one pass rusher in football. He’s disruptive. He’s getting four or six hands on him, it seems, every play. Because of that, our defense finds success and we’re able to exploit offenses in different ways.”
By traditional statistics, Jones is still having an above-average season — 30 tackles, 13 quarterback hits, five sacks and one forced fumble.
Based on almost every advanced metric, Jones’ performance has been imperative to the Chiefs’ defensive success — and the team’s 11-1 record. Jones is the Chiefs’ highest-graded defensive player, earning an 86.6 overall grade, according to Pro Football Focus, including a pass-rushing grade of 90.8, the highest among the league’s qualifying defensive tackles. Jones has generated 54 pressures, 19 stops and has missed only one tackle, according to Pro Football Focus.
“He affects every player around him, whether it’s a linebacker fitting behind him or somebody pass-rushing along with him or it’s the (pass) protections that we’re seeing because of Chris,” Spagnuolo said. “We’ve got to keep trying to take advantage of that.”
A day after the Chiefs’ most improbable victory of this season, a comeback win over the Denver Broncos, Brian Baldinger, an NFL Network analyst, wanted to share his perspective on Jones’ performance.
The Chiefs escaped the Broncos when linebacker Leo Chenal made a diving, game-winning block on a 35-yard field goal attempt from kicker Wil Lutz. Baldinger, a former NFL offensive lineman, didn’t want people to forget how significant Jones was in the game’s outcome.
Analyzing four plays on X, Baldinger showed how Jones disrupted the Broncos’ plan every time. The first clip was a one-on-one in which Jones, from the interior, overpowered left guard Ben Powers before pressuring rookie quarterback Bo Nix, whose deep pass was inaccurate and fell incomplete. On the second snap, Jones whipped right guard Quinn Meinerz to tackle rookie running back Audric Estime for just a 2-yard gain. Three linemen tried to block Jones on the third clip, the play ending with Jones chasing Nix, forcing him to scramble out of bounds for a 3-yard gain. The final play Baldinger showed was Jones blowing up an end-around before receiver Marvin Mims Jr. was given the ball. Jones forced Mims to go out of bounds for a 1-yard loss.
Jones finished with just two tackles and a quarterback hit. But he was the Chiefs’ highest-graded player, earning a 79.2 overall grade from Pro Football Focus.
“He can beat you in so many different ways,” Baldinger said of Jones. “(He’s) one of a kind.”
A perfect example of Jones’ versatility as a pass rusher — and how the Chiefs weaponize it — came early in the fourth quarter, when the Broncos faced a third-and-7 snap leading by one point. When the Chiefs broke their huddle, Jones moved to left defensive end, his presence there influencing the Broncos’ pass-protection scheme and Spagnuolo’s blitz. With tight end Adam Trautman and right tackle Mike McGlinchey having to account for Jones, Spagnuolo blitzed safety Justin Reid and cornerback Nazeeh Johnson through the opposite B gap, which generated immediate pressure on Nix, whose deep ball was once again incomplete.
The Chiefs took over near midfield and took the lead for good.
“Just the quality of what he’s doing continues to be the same as it’s always been, really,” Brandon Thorn, the creator of “Trench Warfare,” said of Jones. “He can do it from inside or out. Plus, the way (the Chiefs) designed their pass-rush plan in terms of moving him around is really good.”
The highest-graded Chiefs in Week 10 vs the Broncos:
🥇 Chris Jones – 79.2
🥈 Justin Reid – 77.9
🥉 Drue Tranquill – 77.3
🏅 Travis Kelce – 76.3
🏅 Mike Pennel – 71.0(min. 25 snaps) pic.twitter.com/ub3OYp0EHo
— PFF KC Chiefs (@PFF_Chiefs) November 11, 2024
Thorn believes there are just three other NFL defensive tackles this season who, on occasion, can be used as an edge rusher — DeForest Buckner of the Colts, Nnamdi Madubuike of the Ravens and Vita Vea of the Buccaneers.
“But I would say the rate at which Chris Jones does go outside is higher than pretty much any defensive tackle,” Thorn said. “He’s just been awesome. Chris is in his own category.”
Thorn said with the retirement of Aaron Donald, Jones is the No. 1 defensive tackle.
“It’s building to an all-time great [career],” Thorn said.
Jones, 6-foot-6 and 310 pounds, has played at least one snap at all nine technique spots on the Chiefs’ defensive line this season when the opponent has attempted a pass, according to TruMedia. Four of Jones’ five sacks have come when rushing from the edge.
“I take it as offensive if I don’t get double-teamed,” Jones said. “That’s the challenge I look forward to. When the time comes and I do get a one-on-one block, I make sure I try to win it.”
When lined up as a defensive tackle, Jones has experienced the most double-team snaps in the league (67 percent), according to Next Gen Stats. Yet Jones still leads all players at the position with the highest pass-rush win rate (18 percent), according to player tracking data.
“When he’s on the interior, the center has to slide to his side essentially every time,” Thorn said of Jones. “That opposite defensive tackle is going to have a one-on-one against that opposite guard. The Chiefs do a really nice job of faking, almost like a simulated pressure, by having a linebacker cheat up (toward the line of scrimmage) at the snap to make it seem like he’s blitzing.
“That creates a little bit of hesitation sometimes from the center, which delays his ability to help the guard. That split-second of delay, the guard has no chance (against Jones).”
One highlight where Spagnuolo and Jones created such hesitation for the center came in the Chiefs’ comeback victory over the Cincinnati Bengals.
Early in the fourth quarter, quarterback Patrick Mahomes threw an interception. Two plays after the Chiefs’ giveaway, Jones blew up a Bengals screen pass, forcing quarterback Joe Burrow to throw an incompletion. The following play, a third-and-10 snap, Spagnuolo used Chenal to blitz Burrow, a tactic that forced center Ted Karras into a difficult decision: Take on Chenal or help left guard Cordell Volson double-team Jones?
By the time Karras engaged Chenal, Jones had already beaten Volson, creating immediate pressure. Jones and Chenal forced Burrow to escape the crumbling pocket. Defensive end Mike Danna and defensive tackle Tershawn Wharton sandwiched Burrow, forcing a fumble. Safety Chamarri Conner scooped the ball up and scored the Chiefs’ lone touchdown of the fourth quarter.
“He’s such an elite, smart player,” Chiefs All-Pro left guard Joe Thuney said of Jones. “He understands blocking schemes very well. He’s very savvy and he’s so fast and so strong. When you put that combination together, he’s a great force.”
Jones’ transformation — into being the NFL’s best interior rusher and the highest-paid player at his position — began early in the 2021 season.
The problem, however, was that year didn’t begin the way Jones envisioned. Before the calendar turned to October, Jones played through a lingering wrist injury. Even though he was getting snaps at defensive end for the first time, he wasn’t as effective as he or the Chiefs had hoped. In 14 games that season, Jones still had nine sacks and earned an 84.3 overall grade from Pro Football Focus, the fifth-highest among interior linemen.
Not satisfied, Jones spent the following summer in Miami focusing on increasing his stamina and quickness with trainer Pete Bommarito, improvements necessary to become a dual-threat pass rusher. For the 2022 season, coach Andy Reid and Spagnuolo hired Joe Cullen, the veteran defensive line coach known for his intense teaching style and pass-rushing tactics. Spagnuolo and Cullen altered the Chiefs’ pass-rushing scheme, a plan that made Jones the focal point, a first in his career.
“Spags is a heck of a guy,” Jones said. “Against certain schemes, I’m able to exercise my rights and go outside or go inside, depending on what formation they show. Sometimes I overdo it. It’s like a blitz. I take a lot of calculated risks. It’s (a) high reward or no reward.”
CEO for a reason 😤 Congrats, Chris!! pic.twitter.com/LL0Qf4TVMP
— Kansas City Chiefs (@Chiefs) November 29, 2024
Linebacker Nick Bolton gets the play calls from Spagnuolo transmitted in his ear and then relays the information to his teammates. Bolton said it took him at least until halfway through his second season to get comfortable with Jones freelancing.
Jones’ most famous rogue moment came in the 2022 AFC Championship Game. In a masterful performance, Jones produced two sacks, five quarterback hits, three tackles behind the line of scrimmage, 10 pressures and a pass-rush win rate of 27.5 percent against the Bengals, according to Pro Football Focus. In the final minute, Jones called his shot before a pivotal third-and-8 snap: He wanted to switch positions with defensive end Carlos Dunlap.
“Honestly, I didn’t know what he was doing at first,” Bolton said of Jones. “Based on (the play call) we had, we hadn’t really done that all week. But it wasn’t compromising the scheme. He said he saw something on tape that he thought he could take advantage of, so he lined up outside.”
But Dunlap didn’t want to switch with Jones.
“The two of them are kind of beefing at each other about who’s aligning inside or outside,” linebackers coach Brendan Daly said in “Time’s Yours 2,” an NFL Films documentary. “I’m saying to myself, ‘This is not happening right now.’ Finally, Carlos just jumps down and Chris barely gets lined up as the ball is getting snapped.”
Jones’ most memorable postseason sack took three seconds. He overwhelmed right tackle Hakeem Adeniji to end the Bengals’ final possession.
“He hit (Adeniji) with a speed rush, knocked his hands down and the rest is history,” Bolton said of Jones.
Two weeks later, in Super Bowl LVII, Jones was double-teamed by the interior of the Philadelphia Eagles’ offensive line, which allowed Bolton to have a clear path toward quarterback Jalen Hurts, who fumbled near midfield. Bolton scooped the ball up and scored a game-changing touchdown on a 36-yard return.
The Chiefs beat the San Francisco 49ers in Super Bowl LVIII — becoming the league’s first back-to-back champion in two decades — in part because Spagnuolo, using Jones as the sun, revolved plenty of defenders around his superstar to generate a season-high nine unblocked pressures, all of which came on blitzes, according to Next Gen Stats.
Spagnuolo broke his play-calling tendency, too, on the Chiefs’ final defensive play of the game, a third-and-5 snap from the 9-yard line. The Chiefs surprised quarterback Brock Purdy with a Cover 0 blitz. The secondary covered the 49ers’ skill-position players well enough for two seconds, allowing Jones, who was unblocked, to hit Purdy, who threw an incompletion.
“He knows that when his time comes, when they do give him that one-on-one block, he’s going to win and those are usually the biggest moments of the game,” Mahomes said of Jones. “He’s a guy that’s going to have a gold jacket.”
When the Chiefs won in overtime, the first player Reid celebrated with was Jones.
A month later, Jones achieved two goals he wanted with his new contract with the Chiefs: staying with the franchise that selected him in the 2016 draft and an annual salary that made him the league’s highest-paid defensive tackle. But once Jones signed his deal, the Chiefs felt they couldn’t acquire another pass rusher in free agency. Instead, the team re-signed Danna, Wharton and defensive tackle Mike Pennel. General manager Brett Veach spent the rest of the offseason focused on improving other areas of the Chiefs roster, most notably the offense. Veteran contributors from last year’s defense — safety Mike Edwards, cornerback L’Jarius Sneed and linebacker Willie Gay — went elsewhere.
Jones, understanding the burden, entered training camp this season determined to accomplish a new feat, winning the NFL defensive player of year award.
“It’s a commitment to myself that I make and also challenging myself to make my teammates better,” he said in July. “No matter how much money I’m making, my morals never change with football: I play because I love the game.”
Jones is not expected to win the award this season, but his value to the Chiefs is evident. One of the most underrated parts of his performance is that he understands his team needs him on the field as much as possible.
Entering Sunday’s prime-time game against the Los Angeles Chargers, Jones has played 83 percent of the Chiefs’ defensive snaps (623) as he is on pace to have the highest percentage of on-field usage in his career. Only one defensive lineman in the league (Madubuike) has been on the field for more pass-rushing snaps (451) than Jones (436), according to Pro Football Focus.
“I work on my conditioning throughout the season,” Jones said. “It’s a testament to my coaches for taking care of me throughout the (practice) week, so when the game comes I’m able to accumulate a lot of plays.”
When Jones is on the field, the Chiefs have recorded 23 sacks, 151 pressures and nine turnovers, according to TruMedia. When Jones is not on the field, the Chiefs have recorded only one sack, 12 pressures and one turnover in 128 snaps.
Despite the Chiefs ranking 27th in sacks, Jones is proud he hasn’t fallen into the trap that did at times earlier in his career: chasing sacks instead of executing his pass-rushing assignment.
“A lot of the things I do … open up things for other people,” Jones said. “As a defensive lineman, it’s hard to be appreciated as much unless you’ve got 10-15 sacks. But it doesn’t take away from what (you’re) contributing to the defense’s success. It’s OK to not have the numbers.
“They don’t really matter, but I would love to have two sacks every game. More importantly, it’s about winning and playing the best you can.”
Thorn believes he has found a better way to quantify Jones’ impact compared with the league’s other elite pass rushers. Every few weeks in “Trench Warfare,” Thorn updates two metrics called “true pressure rate” and “pressure quality ratio.”
In terms of true pressure rate, Thorn provides further context to the quality of the pressures a pass rusher produces, how quickly they’re winning and what they’re doing to win against an offensive lineman or double-team. Through Week 12, Jones led the metric with a TPR of 41.5 — ahead of Browns defensive end Myles Garrett (36.5), Vikings outside linebacker Jonathan Greenard (35.3) and 49ers defensive end Nick Bosa (34.5).
For pressure quality ratio (PQR), Jones led the metric with 36 high-quality pressures — a win against a double-team or one-on-one that leads to a quarterback hit or hurry against an above- or below-average blocker because of the pass rusher’s skill, moves and/or athletic ability. Jones had just 11 low-quality pressures, the result of the quarterback running into the pass rusher’s direction because of the scheme or pressure from another rusher or being unblocked due to the scheme or a missed assignment.
“For every 10 pass-rush snaps, he gets a high-quality pressure,” Thorn said of Jones. “He’s highly efficient.”
That trend was evident in the Chiefs’ win last week over the Raiders. After his first sack, Jones created another high-quality pressure just eight pass-rushing snaps later. Rushing from the left defensive end spot, Jones overpowered rookie right tackle D.J. Glaze to sack O’Connell in just three seconds.
“With Chris, you can move him around in so many different ways,” Tranquill said. “You don’t know where he’s going to line up. Our defense goes through him. When he’s playing his best ball, we’re playing our best ball.”
