San Francisco 49ers defensive tackle D.J. Jones is a fan favorite. The often under-appreciated defender will become a free agent on March 16. He had his best season in 2021, earning career-high overall (73.3) and pass-rushing (66.6) grades from Pro Football Focus.
"If his objective is to stay here, he made it really hard," general manager John Lynch said this week at the NFL Scouting Combine. "I do think it's going to be challenging."
That isn't an encouraging assessment of the situation for those hoping Jones returns for the 2022 season.
One 49ers insider, Matt Maiocco of NBC Sports Bay Area, isn't optimistic that Jones will be back. That's not to say that the Niners wouldn't love to have him return. However, the defensive lineman may have priced himself out of San Francisco's plans for the future.
"I think that everybody would want to have D.J. Jones back, but I don't think it's realistic unless the market just crashes," Maiocco said Friday on KNBR. "D.J. Jones, I was a little bit surprised, a year ago, that D.J. Jones didn't get a multi-year contract offer from another team, and he came back to the 49ers. He made decent money, but it was just a one-year deal.
"I would be shocked, this year, if teams didn't watch the 49ers defense on those base downs and think, Wow, we could really use that guy. There's a lot of teams out there that need to bulk up their run defense, and I think D.J. Jones is very good in that area."
Jones' snap totals have increased during each of his five NFL seasons. This past season, he played over 50 percent of the defensive snaps for the first time in his career, appearing in all 17 regular-season games and the 49ers' three playoff games.
Jones' 24 pressures, 20 quarterback hurries, and 10 tackles for a loss were all career-highs.
"And I'm also a firm believer that D.J. Jones can be a three-down player," Maiocco continued. "I think he has pass-rush skills that never really were shown since he's been with the 49ers. So, if you're asking me now about D.J. Jones, I think he's gone. I think he's going somewhere else. I think he's going to make a big payday."
It's not just money factoring into a potential decision to move on from Jones. You also have to look back to 2020, when the 49ers invested a first-round pick on defensive tackle Javon Kinlaw. Kinlaw appeared in just four games this past season before undergoing reconstructive surgery of his ACL.
"And part of the reason the 49ers couldn't say, 'OK, here's what we're going to lock for his contract, but if it goes above this, we've got to move on,' is because of Javon Kinlaw," Maiocco said. "He's apparently pain-free. I don't know exactly what the timetable is for him but when the 49ers made that decision two years ago to select Javon Kinlaw, it was part of obviously replacing DeForest Buckner, but it was also to kind of cover their butts in case they needed somebody there.
"And now that Arik Armstead has slid inside, an Armstead and Javon Kinlaw starting tackle tandem, as long as Kinlaw's healthy now, that's a pretty good group. So they could probably move on [from Jones] and not really get hurt too much."
You can listen to the entire conversation with Maiocco below.