The New England Patriots placing Jack Jones on injured reserve will have significant financial ramifications for the second-year cornerback.
Jones, who will miss at least the first four games of the 2023 NFL season with a hamstring injury, will see his paycheck take a hit due to his IR designation. Part of Jones' contract allows the Patriots to dock roughly half of his pay until he returns to the field, as Sports Illustrated's Albert Breer explained on NBC Sports Boston's Patriots Pregame Live.
“There’s an interesting nuance in Jack Jones’ contract that would say that, whether he was punished or not here, he’s going to feel the brunt of this,” Breer said on Sunday. “He has what’s called an injury split in his rookie contract. What does that mean? That means if he starts the season on injured reserve, the Patriots can lower his salary while he’s on injured reserve from $870,000 to $475,000. So, roughly split that salary in half.”
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The Patriots would have had to pay the entirety of Jones' salary had he begun the season on the 53-man roster.
“What’s interesting about this is, if they had carried him on the roster (Sunday), they couldn’t have done that to him,” Breer added. “He would have been on the roster at $875,000, and he would have been collecting game checks as such as long as he was out, and then obviously coming back in.
“Now, the Patriots can basically dock him $22,000 per week. That means he should lose a minimum of $88,000 being on injured reserve for the four weeks — that’s the minimum — and then will lose another $22,000 a week on top of that for every week he missed beyond the four weeks.”
Jones sustained the injury in Wednesday's practice, just one day after the gun charges he faced for his June arrest at Logan Airport were dropped. The 2022 fourth-round draft pick could still face discipline from the league for the incident.
The Jones-less Patriots secondary will be tested out of the gate with a difficult Week 1 matchup. Jonathan Jones and rookie Christian Gonzalez are expected to be the top two cornerbacks against elite Philadelphia Eagles wide receivers A.J. Brown and DeVonta Smith.
Patriots-Eagles is set for a 4:25 p.m. ET kickoff at Gillette Stadium.