Raiders Were Warned About Chandler Jones’ Off-Field Issues Prior to Signing Him

The Chandler Jones signing will go down as probably the worst deal the Raiders handed out in the Josh McDaniels era, and the more we learn about the way it happened, the decision to sign him only gets worse.

At the time of his signing, everyone knew that Jones was on the back side of his illustrious career. The hope was that he still had good years left and that didn’t turn out to be the case.

But the bigger disappointment with Jones ended up being the off-field issues that forced the Raiders to cut him prior to the start of his second season with the team.

Those off-field issues were a surprise to people on the outside, but the Raiders apparently knew about them before they signed Jones to a three-year, $51 million deal.

According to Sports Illustrated insider Hondo Carpenter on the Las Vegas Raiders Insider podcast, the Raiders were told about some of the off-field issues Jones was dealing with before they signed him.

Hondo would know because he says he was the one who told them…

“I got a phone call from a teammate of [Chandler Jones] with the Arizona Cardinals who shared with me some very concerning things about Chandler. Some off-field concerns, and forget those, what about the fact [that] last year he had a lot of sacks, but most of them came in one game. He was a defensive lineman over 30 and you don’t pay that kind of money to them… but nope, he was a Patriot.

I remember going to, and it doesn’t matter who, but of the men in the article (either Josh McDaniels or Dave Ziegler) and saying to them ‘Man, one of his teammates contacted me. Are you sure that you’re really considering bringing him in here?’ and it was a decision that both men agreed on. It was a bad decision… and it ended up costing Mark Davis a ton of money and it ended up hurting this franchise.”

And in the words of Paul Harvey (look it up young people)…

Now you know the rest of the story.

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