It didn't take long for the Denver Broncos to overtake the Kansas City Chiefs in the AFC West. The Broncos broke out for the first time in the 2024 NFL Season, finishing 10-7 and making the playoffs. And while the team finished third in the division, the improvement could not have been more obvious.
And even the year prior, in 2023, the Broncos had beaten the Chiefs at home for the first time in nearly a decade. That win was quite important for this entire franchise, especially when you look back at what the team has since done.
Well, the Chiefs aren't necessarily in any better of a spot than they were last year when they finished 6-11 and missed the playoffs. In fact, it might be even harder for Kansas City to get back into the postseason given how shaky this roster is in some spots. Furthermore, some of their key players are also getting up there in age and simply not as effective anymore.
Denver Broncos rivals have one of the 10 worst contracts in the sport
For Bleacher Report, Brag Gagnon ranked the 10 worst contracts in the NFL ahead of the 2026 season, and Chris Jones' contract, the Chiefs' reliable defensive tackle, came in at No. 6 on the list:
"The Contract: 5 years, $158.8 million with $95 million guaranteed (signed in 2024)
The Problem: The soon-to-be 32-year-old's approximate value total at Pro Football Reference has dropped significantly in back-to-back campaigns as he continues to drift away from his prime.
The Kicker: Jones' $44.9 million 2026 cap hit is the fourth-largest in the NFL this season, and easily the largest among non-quarterbacks. That's about 15 percent of the entire Chiefs' payroll! He's also slated to cost nearly $83 million in 2027 and 2028 combined. "
Jones is still a very good player, but he's being played like an elite one, and he's just not that type of guy anymore. Gagnon makes a good point about Jones' Approximate Value from Pro Football Reference. This is a statistic that assigns a numerical value to every player in the league - the higher, the better.
In 2025, Will Anderson led the NFL with an AV of 20. The highest AV that Pro Football Reference has recorded was LaDanian Tomlinson, all the way back in 2006 when he finished with over 2,000 scrimmage yards and 31 touchdowns.
For Jones, his AV was 18 in 2023, 16 in 2024, and 12 in 2025, so, based on this figure, he is declining. Jones finished with seven sacks this past season, which was the fourth-lowest total of his career. He had just 29 total tackles, which was the third-lowest.
The contract is also a beast, and that's a great thing for a team like the Broncos, a franchise that has smartly allocated their available cap space to key players without making a blatant overinvestment. Jones' cap hit balloons to nearly $45 million in 2026, which is among the highest in the entire NFL.
The Chiefs could cut him in 2027, but the best way for them to do that would be to designate it as a post-June 1st move. Even if they did that, the Chiefs would eat nearly $10 million in dead money. While Jones is still a quality player, he's on the wrong side of 30 and isn't going to get any better.
This is one of the more 'classic' mistakes that a front office can make - paying an aging veteran one final time and getting into a situation where the production doesn't match the contract. When NFL teams pay young players, for example, they're typically paying them because of what they believe that player can do in the future.
When front offices get in a mode of paying aging players, it's more to reward them for what they have done for the team, and that gets teams in a load of salary cap trouble.
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