Chris Jones has racked up six Pro Bowls, three first-team All-Pro selections, 80.5 career sacks, and three Super Bowl rings, all while anchoring the Kansas City Chiefs’ defensive front since 2016. That combination of production, hardware, and longevity is exactly what puts most players on the fast track to Canton.
Yet when FanSided’s Lou Scataglia published his new list of “easy” Hall of Fame locks among active NFL players, Jones was nowhere to be found. It’s nice to see Patrick Mahomes and Travis Kelce make the cut, but the omission is hard to square with Jones’s standing around the league. He was ranked No. 6 overall (and the highest interior defender) on the NFL’s Top 100 Players of 2024, one slot ahead of every defensive star except Micah Parsons.
Chris Jones deserves a HOF spot, even if interior trench work is often overlooked.
Jones isn’t just putting up sack totals from the interior, though 80-plus in nine seasons is rarefied air for a defensive tackle. He’s the centerpiece of a defense that’s transformed from liability to championship backbone, delivering game-swinging moments in each playoff run under Andy Reid.
In five Super Bowl appearances, Jones has logged 13 combined tackles and countless pressures that never show in a box score but do show up in rings.
Interior linemen never get the same amount of attention as edge rushers, but the modern NFL lives and dies by disrupting the pocket from all angles. No interior defender besides the recently retired Aaron Donald has done that more consistently than Jones.
Jones has forced coordinators to dedicate double-teams to him on the majority of plays, and he’s altered entire blocking schemes for nearly a decade. That’s a level of week-to-week respect that mirrors what Myles Garrett or T.J. Watt see off the edge.
If sustained dominance, postseason heroics, and individual accolades define a Hall of Famer, Jones already checks every box. Leaving him off any “sure thing” list says more about our tendency to overlook trench work than it does about Jones’s future candidacy.
