5 weeks in

[ROMOTOOWENS]

And there is my guy Quinn

 

[es4m11]

We play a lot more cover one than cover two and Heath is deep more

I'm aware of this. My point is we still play plenty of cover-2, and creating turnovers is an important part of the job for a Safety in that system. It's possible Dallas would play more cover-2 if we had more effective Safeties.

I was curious to see just how much Dallas has been using Jones in coverage, so I watched the coaches film (gamepass is pretty sweet, and worth it, technical difficulties aside) for the games against the Rams and Packers and charted Jones for every defensive play he was on the field (minus a series against the Rams I couldn't watch). I was a little surprised to see Jones is out in coverage a lot more than I thought.

I watched Jones on 119 snaps over those two games and the breakdown is as follows...
Jones was in...
* coverage 50% of snaps, 60 total -- almost always against a TE whether on the line, in the slot, or out wide
* cover-2 27% of snaps, 32 total
* single high Safety 18% of snaps, 21 total -- relatively even mixture of man and zone (cover-3)
* blitz 5% of snaps, 6 total -- usually lined up as slot corner

So Jones is still roughly back in zone coverage 45% of the time. A little less than I thought. This year, Dallas is using Jones very much like they did in 2015 during his rookie season.

 

[ROMOTOOWENS]

Jones did get a highlight play yesterday.

 

[tomodach10]

I have to give the defense props. It was the best game they played this year IMO>

 

[jarntt]

I think a lot of that has to do with the injuries to CBs and the fact that we want Jones up on the TEs. Also, with our safeties, you wouldn't think we would be playing 3 of them together as much as we do. I think when all of the corners are back we may see Jones deep a little more. One difference with 2015 when he is up at the line is he was on WRs a lot more then than he is this year. There are plays he is on WRs, but moreso on TEs. But he played CB a lot that year so that would of course be a big part of the reason why.