By adding Byron Jones, did the Dolphins just build the NFL’s best coverage secondary?
The Miami Dolphins are signing Byron Jones, one of the best cornerbacks in football and one of the biggest names in free agency.
The Dolphins are making Jones the highest-paid corner in NFL history — surpassing the deal they gave just last year to Xavien Howard.
The details: five years, $82.5 million, including $57 million guaranteed, according to ESPN. It’s a front-loaded deal that will pay Jones $40 million in the first two seasons.
Now Howard and Jones are teammates (assuming Howard isn’t traded) and have the makings of perhaps the greatest cornerback tandem in the NFL.
In other words, exactly what Brian Flores needs to truly make his defensive system — which relies heavily on defensive backs — work.
Jones, a former first-round pick, is coming off a Pro Bowl (and second-team all-pro) season in Dallas. But his stats don’t exactly jump off the page. He has just two interceptions in five seasons. But Pro Football Focus ranked him the 14th-best cornerback in the league last year and he played a lot with his back to the quarterback in the Cowboys’ system.
Plus opposing quarterbacks were able to avoid Jones. Who will they avoid now that Howard is his teammate?
The Dolphins’ secondary, for now, includes Howard and Jones at cornerback and Eric Rowe and Bobby McCain at safety. Good luck throwing against that group. All four played cornerback most if not all of their NFL careers.
So who is Byron Jones?
He’s a ridiculously athletic Connecticut native who stayed home to play his college ball and played both safety and corner for UConn. Jones missed much of his final year on campus with a shoulder injury and wasn’t considered a top prospect until he set a world record in the broad jump at the NFL Scouting Combine.
Suddenly, everyone knew his name. The Cowboys took him with the 27th pick of the draft, and didn’t regret it. He’s missed just one game in five years and started all but seven of them.
The move immediately raised questions about Howard’s future with the team. After all, the two will combine to account for some 15 percent of the team’s salary cap, and Howard is coming off another injury-shortened seasons.
Along with his chronic knee issues, Howard had the embarrassing late-season domestic violence arrest, but the charge was dropped when the alleged victim decided not to cooperate with prosecutors.
Should the Dolphins decide to move on from Howard, they could do so at little cost. The salary cap hit would be just $5.6 million. The belief around the league is that the Dolphins would be able to get a second-round pick in return, should they decide to deal him.
This story was originally published March 16, 2020 at 7:21 PM.
