Chris Jones - Making Him the Highest Paid Defender in the League

[RealSNR]

I'm certainly not desperate to trade Jones, but there is also a flaw to the reasoning: "Why do people want to trade Jones for draft picks? So you could one day pick Chris Jones? That's what we have right now!"

Not quite. What we have right now is Chris Jones on his rookie 2nd round contract. That's about to go away. We now have to pay out a contract that prevents us from being flexible in addressing other areas of the team. Yes, we have absolutely zero reason to believe that's not a good investment, but there's still the dreaded risk of injury.

It's assuming that none of our draft picks will be as good as Chris Jones, but it's also protecting against getting caught with our pants down. Which... when you have a player like Mahomes, is kind of the name of the game. In any given season where you didn't suffer catastrophic once-a-decade injury bad luck (think last year's Eagles) you're poised to tear ass through the playoffs and be in the hunt to win a Super Bowl.

Note: This is assuming we got a Kahlil Mack-like haul (hell, I'd even accept a Jared Allen-like haul) in the trade. And even then, if that were the reported offer, I wouldn't be too quick to pull the trigger, and I certainly wouldn't fault Veach for keeping Jones. Trading Jones just to not pay him is definitely a stupid idea.