Key Points
- The Titans signed Jeffery Simmons to a three-year, $105.8M extension with $100M guaranteed.
- Its $35.2M average annual value makes him the NFL's highest-paid defensive tackle.
- The figure tops the Chiefs' Chris Jones, who averaged $31.75M a year.
- The deal keeps the 28-year-old in Tennessee through the 2030 season.
The Tennessee Titans just reset the interior-defensive-line market. The team signed Jeffery Simmons to a three-year, $105.8 million extension on June 19, a deal worth $100 million guaranteed that makes the 28-year-old the highest-paid defensive tackle in NFL history. At $35.2 million a year, Simmons clears the previous benchmark — Chiefs star Chris Jones at $31.75 million — by a comfortable margin and locks himself into Tennessee through 2030.
The numbers
$105.8 million over three years, $100 million of it guaranteed, $35.2 million in average annual value. The guarantee is the tell: $100 million locked in for an interior lineman is the kind of commitment usually reserved for quarterbacks and edge rushers, and it signals where the Titans see the spine of their roster. Simmons is coming off the best season of his career, which is what turns a good player into a market-setting one at the table.
Why the Titans paid
Tennessee is rebuilding, and you anchor a rebuild around your best player rather than letting him walk. Simmons has been the most disruptive piece of the Titans' defense for years; paying him at the top of the position is cheaper, long-term, than trying to replace what he does. The deal also fits a broader NFL pattern of resetting ceilings — the same offseason that produced Patrick Mahomes' $504.75M extension, the first contract in league history past half a billion dollars. The cap keeps climbing, and the players anchoring franchises are climbing with it. For Tennessee, the message is simple: the defense runs through Simmons, and now the books say so.
Simmons' deal has since become the reference point in another defensive tackle's contract dispute: Tampa Bay's Vita Vea requested a trade in July after his own extension talks with the Buccaneers stalled, with his $17.75 million average annual value now well below the position's new ceiling.
Source: CBS Sports, Tennessee Titans
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