****The Chris Jones Thread****

[DJ's left nut]

Staylor and I had a brief exchange via PM regarding Jones in early/mid February so I can pretty comfortably claim no bias here. This was what I thought about the guy at the time:

He sure seems to play with his pads pretty high; kinda surprising for a guy from a program that's ascending. You'd have thought they'd have coached that out of him.

He looks like he's athletic but not explosive, if that makes any sense. Yes, sometimes you'll seem him pop through that line, but for the most part he looks to generate his speed via length (some long legs on that dude) and not necessarily his first step. The length could explain why he loses leverage so often. It makes his speed a little less functional at the next level, IMO.

He does look like a pretty powerful guy. That said, it's a little hard to judge interior lineman watching tape against Mizzou - they were just comically bad on the interior this year. That tape demonstrates it as well as anything you'll see - a lot of those plays were plays where nobody picked him up at all. There weren't a ton of plays in there where he got engaged and shed his man quickly enough to impact the play (and there were a handful where he just stopped if someone got their hands on him).

From that clip, I'd say middle of the 2nd seems like a good spot for him. If he went out there and crushed the cone/shuttle drills, I might move him up a bit. I think he'll struggle as a rookie due to the leverage issues but there's some potential there. You sure like seeing that kind of strength/length in a 5-tech. He'd probably be an excellent 2-gap player but if we're going to stay a little more aggressive with our down linemen, I think there are better fits in this draft.

I went out and dug around on him a little more at the time and came away with the same impressions. I found it interesting that as more and more information came about about him, you saw more and more 'effort' concerns I noted when I said he had a tendency to give up when he was engaged (though I didn't recall seeing the pad level concerns that I have).

That's why I'm not impressed by the 'value' here - I saw the guy as a mid-2nd pick and we got him in the early 2nd; so about where he should've gone. The problem is that I don't see him as being a particularly great fit considering need and scheme. I also hate that we gave up the possibility of the 5th year option and all we got was a 4th rounder in return.

It's funny to see some of the same people that defend picks like Robinson and Hill as 'low risk' guys because they didn't cost much to acquire yet act like the 4th we got (when we used a 4th on Robinson) was some exceptional return to lose out on a chance at Jack and also lose out on a 5th year option for Jones. They didn't interview Jones so it tells me he wasn't nearly as high on their list as they're now claiming given how much weight Dorsey has put on his face to face discussions with prospects in the past.

And for all the talk about how he could've been a 1st rounder - that's almost ALWAYS the case with second rounders. This is just accepted - the 2nd round is full of guys with 1st round talent but with obvious flaws. Jones was effort; it simply wasn't there often enough. Moreover, the draft atmosphere has become like movie posters; producers will comb through 200 movie reviews to find a couple of lines from them that can then get slapped on a poster. Even the guys that made Gigli found a line for their movie poster. That's what social media has done to draft prospects; comb through 100 experts and suddenly EVERYONE is a steal. All under-classmen are guys that would've gone a round earlier if they stayed another year (again, there were people saying Donald Stephenson would've been the best T in the 2013 class had he returned)

SNR referred to this as a low ceiling approach and I think I understand what he means. If we let Poe walk, move Howard inside and put Jones on the edge - that's a serious downgrade on our DL....and it's also probably the best possible ROI on Jones because the alternative is that he's a backup for a couple years before replacing Howard or Bailey. That's a pretty poor use of your 1st rounder, even if you took the guy in the 2nd.