How Chiefs’ Brett Veach rebooted long-term negotiations with Chris Jones last fall
At the most visible moment of Chris Jones’ holdout last year, the spectacle of seeing him sitting in the home stands with his agents for the season opener against the Detroit Lions, the defensive lineman’s long-term future with the Chiefs appeared improbable.
Considering the curious and tantalizing gesture some interpreted as taunting, especially as the Chiefs lost that night, Jones’ stance might well have alienated more than just a number of fans.
With the Chiefs seeking to become the first NFL team to repeat as champions in nearly two decades, it already was reasonable to wonder how his pursuit was being perceived in a locker room where megastar Patrick Mahomes and Travis Kelce take less money — albeit gobs of it — than they could demand to facilitate financial flexibility toward winning.
More salient to a potential long-term deal, or just salvaging a one-year pact at that point, was how Jones’ awkward appearance there while holding out might have played in general manager Brett Veach’s front office or with Chiefs chairman and CEO Clark Hunt.
If the relationships weren’t frayed or contentious, well, that might at least have made it more distant.
Take it from Jones.
“Through the midst of the journey, holding out and actually coming to a game, there’s so many ways that could be viewed, right, as an owner,” Jones said via Zoom on Tuesday in his first interview since the announcement Saturday that he’d signed a monster contract with $95 million in guarantees tied into the first three years.
But with the sides at something like a tipping point for the season, not to mention forever, the Chiefs instead reached out in a new way to Jones — whom Veach had identified as the force around which all else revolves on their defense.
While Veach will say he gets along great with the Katz brothers, Jones’ representatives, he thought something significant could be established by asking Jones to “just you and me talk” in his office.
Meeting face to face, Veach said days before the Super Bowl in Las Vegas, allowed for something more personal than might otherwise be conveyed through tense layers of negotiations by intermediaries.
During their approximately two-hour session, Veach said, there was no huge shift in offers.
But he was able to directly express what Jones meant to him and the franchise, that he was wanted “and (that) we also just want to make these lines (between them) go away.”
“I think there was a genuine respect in the way we did that,” Veach said. “And I think he left with a greater appreciation of me, and I certainly left with a greater appreciation of him.”
While the most immediate result was days later in the one-year contract heavy on incentives, such as the 10-sacks/$1.25 million bonus that played out to hilarious effect in the regular-season finale against the Chargers, the seeds also were planted then for what was reaped over the weekend.
The idea was to “build a bridge” to the other side of the season, as Veach put it in February. And further armed with the essential data of Mahomes’ contract renegotiated in September and what that told the Chiefs about their limits, Veach correctly anticipated the negotiating would “pick up right where it left off” after the Super Bowl.
As Jones spoke about the dynamics on Tuesday, he repeatedly said he never planned to play for another organization, that he wanted to leave a legacy in Kansas City and to retire a Chief.
As he bellowed at Union Station after the Super Bowl parade: “I ain’t going nowhere, baby! … I will be here this year, next year and the year after!” Evidently considering Jones’ obvious inebriation and the leverage he might have been losing, agent Michael J. Katz responded on social media by suggesting “cut them off bartenders!!!!”
While Jones shrugged off a question about whether he ever really could have pictured himself with the Raiders or other teams — “Guess we’ll never know” — he did acknowledge some doubts along the way to what became a deal that is financially antithetical to the Chiefs’ blueprint in the Mahomes era.
There are “always the unknowns,” he said. “And I understand the business aspect of it. Sometimes it doesn’t work out like that.”
But no matter how it seemed from the outside looking in, no matter how the Chiefs and Jones felt at times, Jones came to believe last fall and since that both sides were sincerely eager to get this done.
So he learned not to take any of it personally when it might have been easy to take it all personally.
Meanwhile, the personal touch was vital between the Katzes and Hunt, whom Jones gave an A-plus and praised for his patience and understanding, and Veach.
Particularly at the critical juncture last fall, when Jones wasn’t with the team and talks seemed to be going nowhere and it was only logical to expect there to be animosity that could carry over.
Instead, they respectfully reset toward a temporary solution.
One that ultimately led to Jones becoming a semi-permanent fixture in an era of Chiefs football he’s helped define.
“When you get in situations like this, there’s never going to be maybe a perfect resolution,” Veach said in February. “But let’s just find somewhere, some common ground we can meet on. And just never close the door (of) communication.”
Even when it sure looked shut for the long-term last September.