With just days before the regular season kicks off, the Las Vegas Raiders’ focus needs to be solely on the Denver Broncos and starting this year off right. The team seemed to have put all of their offseason issues behind them, but now another one seems to have reared its head thanks to veteran defensive end Chandler Jones.
The Raiders brought in Jones last season to help their pass rush and provide some relief on the other side of Maxx Crosby, but he had a below-standard season overall before injury cost him the last couple of games. Coming into this year, Jones was looking to bounce back, but apparently, there were some frustrations with the Raiders franchise, and they boiled over on social media.
Jones took to his Instagram story, where he shared screenshots of text messages between himself and head coach Josh McDaniels while adding other allegations against the team in now-deleted posts via Josh Alper of Pro Football Talk:
In a series of since deleted posts to his Instagram story, Jones shared screenshots of text messages that appear to be addressed to head coach Josh McDaniels asking if the team brought him to Vegas to “play with me” and saying it is not right to make him work out at a local gym rather than at the team’s facility. In other posts, Jones wrote that the team is trying to “provoke” him by barring him from the facility and claims that someone from the team reached out to the mother of his child despite the lack of a current relationship between him and the woman.
Jones would continue on his social media rant, culminating by saying he didn’t want to play for McDaniels or GM Dave Ziegler:
Jones continued by saying he wants to speak to Antonio Brown and Aldon Smith about their problems with the Raiders and suggesting that he isn’t interested in playing for McDaniels or General Manager Dave Ziegler.
“F*** it, I don’t wanna play for the Raiders if that’s my HC or GM,” Jones wrote.
The fact that Jones has deleted the posts would seem to suggest that he and the Raiders are working towards resolving his issues. But the question still remains as to what caused this social media explosion in the first place.
Jones is expected to be relied upon this season to help improve this defense, and perhaps he felt the coaching staff was planning on using him in a way that he doesn’t agree with. This is not the time for distractions, but this is something that will likely need to be answered by Jones or McDaniels before the Raiders take the field Sunday.
