The Kansas City Chiefs, the reigning Super Bowl champions, are opening training camp without their most important defensive player.
Star defensive tackle Chris Jones failed to report to training camp with the rest of the team’s veteran players, according to ESPN’s NFL insider Adam Schefter.
Jones also skipped the team’s mandatory minicamp as he’s trying to leverage a new, long-term contract with the team. Thus far, those negotiations have proved fruitless. According to Shefter, the Chiefs and Jones are “far apart” on a new deal for the Defensive Player of the Year finalist.
That means the Chiefs are preparing, at least in part, to play the season without a dynamic playmaker in the trenches. This was a scenario Chiefs general manager Brett Veach hoped to avoid.
“We have great communication and look, there’s a lot of time before camp,” Veach told Jordan Foote of SI.com back in June.
“I feel good about where we’re going to be with Chris. We’ll get to celebrate [the Super Bowl win], have a good time, and then break. I’m sure we’ll have great dialogue from now to the start of training camp, and look forward to Chris being here, not just for next year but for a long time.”
Losing Jones would certainly be a blow to the Chiefs’ hopes of repeating as Super Bowl champions this season.
