The Kansas City Chiefs are less than a month away from starting their final off-season workouts before the pre-season games.
Training camp starts on 21 July and finishes on 21 August, during the pre-games that precede the official start of the regular season.
KC’s squad is enjoying its last few weeks off, because from training camp onwards, work will continue until the end of the season in February 2025.
The franchise camp will take place at Missouri Western State University in St. Joseph, Missouri. It’s a mandatory phase in which all players must be present.
An important veteran who skipped training camp in 2023
Chris Jones took an extremely long holdout last season in an attempt to extend his contract with Kansas City.
He was out for the entire off-season until the opening game of the season, the trigger for the organisation and him to reach an agreement so that he could be on the field as soon as possible. So the defensive tackle signed with the team for another year.
However, in March 2024, he was rewarded with a massive contract: five more years in KC, for a contract value of $159 million, $95 million of which is guaranteed.
The defender is about to turn 30 and has submitted some proposals to Andy Reid for the upcoming training camp.
Jones wants to preserve his health at all costs
This week, Chris Jones attended another of his youth American football camps in Overland Park.
He spoke to reporters from the Kansas City Star about being too old to participate fully in training camp and confirmed that he had asked Andy Reid to take a few days off from practice.
“Listen man, I’ve already been talking to Andy about, ‘Let me skip out on training camp. I’m a little older, right?”
The DT wants to protect himself and avoid injury.
“I can feel it. I can feel when we have a day on training camp. Give me like two days off and one day on, then – and we maybe can work something out, you know?”
Knowing the head coach, he didn’t seem too thrilled with the request: “He (Reid) just looked at me,” Jones said smiling. “So the conversation is still ongoing.”
Jones reckons his experience means he doesn’t need to be involved full-time in training
Despite purposely missing training camp last season, Jones was named to his second consecutive first-team All-Pro team.
He believes his method will be the same this year: “The mindset is always the same: being in the best shape you could be in, [finding] a way to interact with the community – but also better yourself – doing a good deed a week,” noted.
“I don’t think my mindset ever changed, year in and year out [through different contract situations]. [It’s] just [that] I get a little wiser; I get a few more gray hairs.”