Ahead of the legal tampering period, the Denver Broncos brought back one of their own and re-signed DJ Jones. Jones landed a second contract with the Denver Broncos and has been with the team since signing a three-year, $30 million deal with the team in the 2022 NFL Offseason.
He'll now play his fourth year with the team in 2025 and has been their primary starter at defensive tackle since coming over in free agency. The deal came in late on Sunday, and the details of the contract broke on Monday morning, the day of the legal tampering period:
Compensation update: defensive tackle DJ Jones and the Broncos reached agreement on a three-year, $39 million deal that includes $26 million fully guaranteed, per source. pic.twitter.com/DGHlOMaHEP
— Adam Schefter (@AdamSchefter) March 10, 2025
The deal is for three years and $39 million, with $26 million fully guaranteed. That likely figures to be a two-year deal essentially with an easy 'out' after the 2026 NFL Season.
Let's grade the deal.
Grading the move to re-sign DJ Jones
Jones started in all 48 games he appeared in for the Denver Broncos in the 2022-2024 seasons, racking up five sacks, 122 total tackles, nine tackles for loss, and 11 QB hits. What DJ Jones really does well is stop the run. He's not going to rack up a ton of numbers in the stat sheet and isn't someone who is going to play a ton of snaps.
He played in just 40% of the defensive snaps for the Denver Broncos in the 2024 NFL Season, but according to ESPN, Jones ranked second among all defensive tackles in the NFL last year in run stop win rate.
Denver's run defense was quite solid in 2024, but much of the reason why the defensive front seemed to weaken down the stretch could probably be more attributed to the lack of stability at inside linebacker. The Broncos front office seems to think that Jones is a true anchor along the defensive line, and seeing as they missed out on the top ILBs already due to them re-signing with their own teams, paying DJ Jones a bit more to keep him in Denver makes sense when you think of it that way.
However, overall, this does seem to be a bit of an overpay, and you get a sense of desperation from the Denver Broncos. They clearly did not want to lose Jones to the open market, so they probably ended up paying more than they originally intended for the player.
Overall, this isn't a great signing and does kind of leave you scratching your head.
Grade: C-