Christmas has long since passed, but the Kansas City Chiefs are still getting some shiny new toys to play with.
Chris Jones, a defensive tackle for the squad, is giving the entire D-line and other staff members Rolexes, ESPN reported on Sunday night. The timepieces are a gift from Jones after he got a third-quarter sack, reaching the 10 sacks on the season he needed to snag the $1.25 million bonus that was written into his contract before Week 1.
“The whole [defensive line] gets a Rolex,” Jones told ESPN. “[Defensive coordinator Steve Spagnuolo] gets a Rolex, the coaches get a Rolex because I think it takes a collective [effort] in order to reach those types of goals.”
The Chiefs battled it out with the Los Angeles Chargers on Sunday, pulling off the win by a narrow 13–12 margin. That was thanks in part to Jones’s sack of the Chargers quarterback Easton Stick in the third quarter. Given that the Chiefs had tied up the AFC West title last week, the game wasn’t make or break for the team, and Jones wasn’t supposed to even be on the field for that long.
The defensive tackle said his agreement with Andy Reid, the Chiefs’s coach, was to have him play during the first quarter. But Jones wasn’t able to achieve the sack in time, or even in the first half of the game. He persuaded Reid to keep him in—a decision that paid off in the end.
“He wanted the opportunity, so I gave him the opportunity to start off with third downs and then as it went on, he played a couple first and second downs,” Reid told ESPN. “He wanted to get that done . . . [The $1.25 million], that’s a couple cheeseburgers right there.” (We’re not sure what sort of extravagant cheeseburgers Reid is eating.)
Jones seems to have told his teammates ahead of time that Rolexes were waiting for them on the other side of his next sack, because a huge celebration followed his takedown of Stick. It’ll be a nice memory for Jones himself, as well as the men around him on the field.
“I’ve never been with an older guy that did something like that,” his teammate Charles Omenihu told ESPN. “So that’s a special thing. Pretty cool.”
The guys are probably hoping that their Rolexes will soon be paired with a championship ring.
Authors
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Tori Latham
