KC Chiefs: Ranking Chris Jones’ top five performances ever

The best games Chris Jones has ever played as a member of the Kansas City Chiefs. Factors included sack totals, pressure totals, and PFF overall grades.

Chris Jones is almost certainly going to find his name within the Kansas City Chiefs‘ Ring of Honor when all is said and done. With 49.5 career sacks as an interior defensive lineman, he currently ranks 10th all-time in sacks in Chiefs history, with eighth place being a realistic goal by the end of the 2023 season.

After being drafted in the 2nd round of the 2016 NFL Draft, Chris Jones has since been to three Pro Bowls as well as being named to three 2nd team All-Pro appearances. He’s also recorded at least 7 sacks and at least 1 forced fumble in four consecutive seasons, dating back to 2018.

He’s had no shortage of incredible performances, with 9 career games with at least 2.0 sacks and 11 games with at least 3 QB hits. With that being said, I’ve decided to rank the five best overall games of his NFL career, in my humble opinion.

Let’s go over some ground rules:

• This is just my personal opinion/analysis.
• Regular season and playoff games are weighted the same.
• I decided to go with the best raw games, start to finish, and not games just because they had a single memorable play.
• I am also only factoring in individual performance by Chris Jones himself. So just because the Chiefs defense, or team as a whole, had a down game, that doesn’t disqualify that game from this list, as long as Jones had a strong performance on his own.
• I am also not using raw sack numbers alone to decide the quality of games. For example, Chris Jones’ single-game career-high in sacks does not appear on the list because one sack was due to Dak Prescott running out of bounds and Jones being the closest defender.
• Outside of my memory, the main criteria I used for determining the games included (but weren’t limited to) PFF overall grade, total pressures, and total sacks, with the latter two being slightly adjusted for snap count.

Now that we’ve got a better understanding of what kind of game it will take to appear on the list, let’s get started with a game that does have a memorable play from his career.

5. Week 2 of 2017 vs. the Philadelphia Eagles

Starting with a truly memorable game of Jones’ career, this game was unforgettable for reasons other than the defensive tackle.

First, this was the second time since Andy Reid came to Kansas City that the Chiefs played the Philadelphia Eagles. Second, this game saw the return of Doug Pederson to K.C. after leaving the Chiefs’ offensive coordinator position to become the Eagles’ new head coach a year and a half earlier. Third, after this victory, this became the second in the Andy Reid era, and the first time since 2014 for the Chiefs, that Kansas City beat both teams that ended up playing in the Super Bowl that season. The Chiefs almost blew the game after the Eagles got a hail-mary opportunity after successfully recovering an onside kick.

Relating to Chris Jones’ performance, in 32 snaps and 24 pass-rush snaps, he recorded 3 pressures and 2 sacks, per Pro Football Focus (PFF) (It should be noted that Pro Football Reference and ESPN both have Jones at 3 sacks for this game. This is due to PFF not crediting him for a sack on a play where he tackled Wentz after the Philadelphia QB picked up his own fumble at 0:39 of the third quarter and began to run). He also recorded his first career interception after Justin Houston deflected a Carson Wentz pass.

Another reason that this game made the list is that Jones recorded a 92.0 overall grade from PFF (with 90.0 considered “elite”), tied for the 4th highest of his career. In addition, this game is 1 of 9 where he recorded multiple sacks and 1 of 2 where he recorded an interception.

The next game on the list is one where the Chiefs’ offense was incredible for about 15 minutes, but the defense had one of their better games in a season that ended in a parade.