Reshad Jones wants a new deal, but Miami doesn’t seem overly eager to rework his contract, Barry Jackson of The Miami Herald writes. As it stands, Jones is slated to earn $7.2MM in 2016 and $7.1MM in 2017. He is said to be seeking a deal that would pay him roughly $10MM/year, putting him in the same neighborhood as the league’s highest paid safeties. 
In an effort to compel the Dolphins to give him a more lucrative and longer-term deal, Jones has been staying away from voluntary workouts. When it comes time for summer minicamp, it’s possible that Jones will continue to stay home if he does not get his way. For his part, defensive coordinator Vance Joseph says that there are other players in-house who could fill the void if worst comes to worst.
“We’ve got four [safeties] who are very capable,” Joseph said. “Obviously, Reshad is a great player. Walt Aikens has corner movement,…is going to grow into a pretty good free safety or strong safety. Mike Thomas is very, very efficient. Isa Abdul-Quddus can really run, a low 4.4 (40 time) guy.”
Of course, the Dolphins would be missing a big part of their secondary without Jones. A fifth-round pick in 2010, Jones has been a starter for the Dolphins for most of his career, and played all 16 games in 2015, setting new career-highs in tackles (135), passes defended (10), and interceptions (five), returning two of those picks for touchdowns. Pro Football Focus ranked Jones as the 13th-best safety in the NFL, out of 89 qualified players. Of those 89 safeties, only two received higher grades as run defenders than Jones did.
Jones, who earned his first Pro Bowl nod in 2015, is on the books for base salaries of $7.225MM in 2016 and $7.06MM in 2017, with accompanying cap hits of $8.203MM and $8.038MM, respectively. His current four-year, $28MM+ contract makes him the highest-paid strong safety in the NFL, though he doesn’t rank among the top five highest-paid safeties overall.
Last year, Kam Chancellor was in a contract standoff with the Seahawks before finally reporting to the team during Week Three. Chancellor‘s holdout cost him $1.1MM in fines, $500K in signing-bonus forfeiture, and about $534K in lost salary for a total of about $2.134MM in potential lost earnings.
Photo courtesy of USA Today Sports Images.
YOU SIGNED THE CONTRACT..HONOR IT!
Totally agree
These players today don’t understand the meaning of the word CONTRACT!!
When they have a sucky year the team should renegotiate the contract !! WTF ????
If teams didn’t fall for this crap, it wouldn’t be happening. Blame the owners and GMs who agree to give in to the demands…
It’s not like he is being underpaid, the greed got to him man.
Forget this guy. They paid up when he was barely above average and now he has one good year and he’s going to holdout? Let him holdout and lose money then bench him when he comes back.
HIGHEST PAID STRONG SAFETY IN THE LEAGUE. but he wants to be higher than Free Safeties?!! he is being compensated very fairly. whenever a player demands a contract redo with more than one year remaining it never ends pretty.. YOU signed the deal 2 years ago Reshad.. now man up. NEXT YEAR, in the final year of your deal, is a proper time to make such demands.
I just don’t get it, if he was heading into ’16 with it being the last year of his current contract, then I’d say why not re-up w/him? But he’s still got two years to go, and is STILL the highest paid SS in the league. Sounds like GREED getting a hold of that boy!!