The New England Patriots did not take long to make their first external signing of free agency week. Just eight minutes in the NFL’s legal tampering window, they agreed to a three-year contract with former Baltimore Ravens edge defender Dre’Mont Jones.
We could use this opportunity to talk about the league’s tampering rules and their enforcement considering the timeframe in question, but that is a discussion for another time. Right now, let’s focus on something else: the details of the contract that was supposedly negotiated and agreed upon within a couple of minutes.
All in all, the pact carries a base value of $36.5 million with guarantees totaling $23.1 million.
ED Dre’Mont Jones: Contract details
2026 (age 29):
Base salary: $2,300,000 (fully guaranteed)
Signing bonus: $3,666,666
Roster bonus: $1,020,000
Workout bonus: $180,000
Incentives: $1,000,000
Salary cap hit: $7,166,666
2027 (age 30):
Base salary: $9,800,000 (fully guaranteed)
Signing bonus: $3,666,666
Roster bonus: $1,020,000
Workout bonus: $180,000
Incentives: $1,000,000
Salary cap hit: $14,666,666
2028 (age 31):
Base salary: $9,800,000
Signing bonus: $3,666,668
Roster bonus: $1,020,000
Workout bonus: $180,000
Incentives: $1,000,000
Salary cap hit: $14,666,668
The Patriots went with the same blueprint they used when they signed fellow edge Harold Landry to a three-year, $43.5 million contract last offseason. As was the case with that particular deal, Jones’ pact also effectively guarantees he will be on the team for at least its first two seasons.
New England guaranteed his salaries in both 2026 and 2027, which means that releasing him in either of those years would come with sizable dead cap charges and additional loss of cap space or at best negligible savings. While that structure limits the team’s options with the 29-year-old, it does allow for some stability: in case Landry is not retained entering the third year of his deal, Jones would still be around as another veteran presence on the edge.
The general structure of the deal is nothing out of the ordinary. It comes with an $11 million signing bonus split into three installments, annual workout bonuses of $180,000 and per-game roster bonuses totaling $1.02 million per year. The 2026 portion of the latter are fully considered likely to be earned — Jones was active for 18 games in 2025 being traded from Tennessee to Baltimore in-season — and therefore counted against the Patriots’ cap in their entirety.
Furthermore, he is in a position to earn an extra $1 million in playing time incentives. None of those fall into the LTBE category and are therefore not weighed against New England’s books.
All in all, this is a decent deal for both sides. The Patriots get some disruptive potential at a position where they desperately need it, while Jones is now the 34th highest-paid edge in football in terms of his contract’s average annual value of $12.67 million.