Zay Jones reportedly set to visit with Chiefs

Seven-year veteran receiver Zay Jones is set to visit with the Chiefs on Thursday. After posting a career-season with the Jaguars in 2022 the Jaguars released him at the beginning of the offseason.

Amid the Rashee Rice uncertainty, general manager Brett Veach is bringing in a former second-round pick and seven-year vet to potentially add to the wide receiver room. Former Buffalo Bills, Las Vegas Raiders and Jacksonville Jaguars wide receiver Zay Jones is reportedly visiting with Kansas City on Thursday. 

With Rice allegedly involved in his second off-the-field issue this offseason and wide receivers Odell Beckham Jr., D.J. Chark and Tyler Boyd coming off the market this week, Veach likely feels compelled to insulate the wide receiving corps. Unless you believe Michael Thomas can stay healthy, which is something he has not done since 2019, Jones may be the best of what is left of the free-agent wide receivers. Kansas City will be his fourth free agent visit after meeting with the Dallas Cowboys, Arizona Cardinals and Tennessee Titans.

With Rice in the fold, Jones would likely slate in as the team's fourth-best receiver. He would bump up a spot when or if Rice is suspended in 2024, which would end up having him eat up a ton of snaps. The Chiefs’ third-leading snap-getter last season was Justin Watson, who played over 47 percent of the snaps. Skyy Moore was fourth, earning over 43 percent. 

Not only would he fill an important role from a snap perspective, he would also give the Chiefs their only traditional X receiver, other than Watson. This would be vital for the way head coach Andy Reid likes to run his offense because then he can mix and match Marquise Brown and Xavier Worthy, lining them up in the slot or putting them in motion. When Rice is back into the fold, Jones would complement him well, allowing Rice to still roam the inside playing the power-slot position. With Rice out, it would allow Moore to get niched into the slot role, which best suits his skill set. 

With Rice inevitably being out at some point, Jones also relieves a lot of stress off of Worthy. While expectations are expectedly high for the first-ever first-round wide receiver drafted by Veach, let us not forget that Rice was essentially the first-ever Chiefs rookie receiver to have that much success in year one throughout the entire Reid era in Kansas City. What would be best for Worthy would be to move him around with Reid scheming up mismatches with his elite speed. The same can be said for what Jones would do for Brown, as Hollywood can also win at all three receiver positions and at all three levels of the field. 

The best way to describe Jones would be a comparison to Marquez Valdez-Scantling with a touch more intermediate ability. Jones is a bigger-bodied X-type receiver at six-foot-two, 200 pounds with deep threat ability but he is not quite as boom or bust as Valdez-Scantling. Jones would essentially play the same role as MVS has the past two seasons, though. 

The first and most obvious comparison between the two is they have both lined up exactly 65 percent of their snaps out wide. Neither should be expected to have the offense run through them or lead the team in receiving other than a game or two per year. They do not really raise the floor or the ceiling with their production, but they do open up the offense for others by the way they pull safeties down the field. 

The main difference between the two is that Valdez-Scantling averages six more yards per reception in his career, due to him be pretty much exclusively a deep threat. Jones has a little more nuance to his game which is evident by his 60 percent catch-to-target ratio, compared to MVS’s 53 percent. While Jones is not quite as explosive as a deep threat, he does have a five percent higher contested catch rate, according to PFF. So, even though he ran a 4.45 40 compared to Valdez-Scantling’s 4.37, he is a little more open even when he is not open. Jones also has a 4 percent lower drop percentage all while being targeted 129 more times throughout his career. 

Until last year, Valdez-Scantling had showed a little bit more consistency in terms of production throughout his career. Jones’s production has been all over the place. After a mild rookie season, he racked up 652 yards and seven touchdowns in year two with the then-rookie Josh Allen. 2019 and 2020 went wasted, only tallying 369 yards and one touchdown in those two seasons, which was split between the Bills and Raiders after a midseason trade.

He had apparently done enough for the Raiders to bring him back on a one-year 2.5-million-dollar deal in 2021. That proved to be a good signing for both him and the Raiders as he caught 67 percent of his targets and went for 546 yards. It was a productive enough season for the Jaguars to ink him to three years, $24 million. 

The 2022 season, his first with the Jaguars wound up being a career season for the former East Carolina Pirate. He again caught 67 percent of his targets but was targeted much more by Trevor Lawrence and ended up being the team's number two receiver. That year he produced 82 caches, 823 yards and five touchdowns playing alongside Christian Kirk. 

Fast forward to this offseason, just one year removed from breaking out, the Jaguars cut Jones after signing former Bills receiver Gabe Davis and then going on to draft first-rounder Brian Thomas Jr. In 2023 Jones experienced an injury-riddled season and ended with 321 yards in just nine games played. It should be noted that he was bumped back to the number three spot because the Jags had traded for Calvin Ridley. 

It is the 2022 production that Veach would hope the Chiefs could tap into and I am sure Reid’s former offensive coordinator and current Jacksonville head coach Doug Pederson would let Reid in on the Jones intel. The sad part is what Jones did in nine games last year would have been the second or third-highest production in a lot of categories amongst the receivers. There is no doubt the Chiefs could use someone like Jones given the Rice uncertainty and Worthy being a rookie. I would not expect Jones to be what he was in 2022 production-wise, but the Chiefs could use even 75 percent of that. 

Jones is just one year removed from being a valuable asset and if he can get into mini-camp, which starts in 11 days to start building trust with Mahomes, who knows what could happen. It is pretty slim pickings right now with Michael Thomas, Valdez-Scantling, Corey Davis and Mecole Hardman topping the free agent wide receiver list right now. 

Unless the Chiefs want to rely on Kadarius Toney, Moore and Watson to fill a big role again, I would say the Chiefs need to be pretty urgent and not allow Jones out of the door without putting pen to paper. At the very least, you would like to see a guy like Jones force those three incumbents to earn their snaps, rather than it given to them by default. There really is no such thing as a bad one-year deal.