Insight on what the Miami Dolphins are getting with Jones, Van Noy, Flowers and Lawson
How much have the Dolphins improved themselves in free agency?
Let’s put it this way: If their four big additions on Monday were on the Dolphins last season, they easily would have ranked among the top six to eight players on the team, with only Xavien Howard (injured most of last year) and DeVante Parker in that top six-to-eight mix, and Ryan Fitzpatrick and Eric Rowe (after his move to safety) making a case with their play.
In Kyle Van Noy and Shaq Lawson and Ereck Flowers, they snagged players who instantly become by far the best at their positions on the team. In adding Byron Jones, they signed one of the league’s top 15 free agents and now have potentially one of the league’s best cornerback tandems.
If you scanned the Pro Football Focus rankings for last season, you could always count on Dolphins dominating the bottom quarter of the list at most positions. It’s the opposite with this new batch of players.
Jones was PFF’s 14th-best cornerback last season; no Dolphins corner was in the top half of the league.
Van Noy was rated 16th among 103 edge players and was top five against the run among edge players, which was a high priority for Miami to upgrade. Lawson was 52nd among 107 edge players - by comparison, Taco Charlton was 100th and Avery Moss 103th.
Flowers was 30th among the 80 guards - 36th as a pass blocker and 38th as a run blocker. He allowed only two sacks and 24 quarterback pressures, which was very good for a player logging that many snaps (937). Conversely, Michael Dieter was 78th among 80 guards and permitted six sacks and 44 pressures.
Miami also added perhaps the top special teams player from one of the NFL’s top special teams units in Cincinnati safety Clayton Fejedelem.
Some chatter on the newcomers:
▪ The negative with the 6-1 Jones is he has only two interceptions in five years and none in the past two.
But his coverage numbers are consistently good. PFF rates him the third most valuable cornerback in the NFL since 2018, in terms of wins over replacement, behind Richard Sherman and Stephon Gilmore. He’s versatile and athletic and durable and in the prime of his career at 27.
NFL Network analyst and former NFL cornerback DeAngelo Hall rated Jones the third-best cornerback in this free agent class, behind Chris Harris and Bradley Roby.
“I was skeptical when I saw Byron Jones make the transition from safety to cornerback ahead of the 2018 season,” Hall said. “But he handled his business as an athletic defender who can hold his own against big receivers on the perimeter. And although he had a down year in 2019 -- six passes defensed, one forced fumble and 46 tackles -- he is constantly forcing quarterbacks to thread the needle.
“According to Next Gen Stats, Jones forced tight-window throws on 44.1 percent of targets as the nearest defender since 2018 (highest percentage with a minimum of 100 targets). I’m not sure where the disconnect was in Dallas this year, but this season felt like an anomaly, because Jones has the potential to regain his 2018 form.”
▪ Last season, Jones allowed 30 of 53 passes thrown against him to be caught for 331 yards, three touchdowns and a 94.1 passer rating in his coverage area. That passer rating ranked 86th of 199 players who logged time at cornerback last season.
In 2018, his first year at cornerback after moving from safety, he allowed 37 of 69 passes against him to be caught for 481 yards, two touchdowns and no interceptions and an 85.5 passer rating in his coverage area.
▪ NBC’s Chris Simms said: Brian Flores is trying to “recreate what he had with the Pats when he left. Two legit shutdown cornerbacks. Xavien Howard and Byron Jones are two of the best in the biz. Will challenge Gillmore and JC Jackson for best duo in AFC East.”
▪ ESPN’s Louis Riddick explained Jones’ low interception total this way: “Teams challenge him. What Byron does best is play up on the line of scrimmage on the ball. And man to man coverage doesn’t allow you as many opportunities to intercept the ball as a zone scheme does. That’s what New England does. These guys are going to get up on the line and try to disrupt you and press you and play a physical style. That’s what this guy does.”
▪ Couple other Jones tidbits: When he lined up in the slot last year, he allowed 6 of 8 passes thrown against him to be caught for 115 yards…. He blitzed only two times last season on passing plays… He had 13 tackles and one missed tackle in 321 snaps against the run, with his run-stop percentage ranking in the bottom third of cornerbacks.
“He’s had a great run at corner,” Cowboys vice president Stephen Jones said last month. “He’s played really well, played at a high level and that’s the hard thing when you have quite a few good players on your football team: You get challenges.”
▪ Pro Football Focus said Van Noy was the Patriots’ most improved player last season and explained how his role changed this way:
“From 2014 to 2018, 52% of his snaps came in the box. In contrast, 775 of his 875 defensive snaps came as an outside linebacker and edge defender on the Patriots’ defense this [past] season.
“Van Noy thrived in that role, as he had career-high marks in pass-rushing grade (72.1) and total pressures (58). Where he really took a leap forward was as a run defender, where his 85.4 run-defense grade was over 20 points higher than any year prior that saw him play significant snaps.”
▪ He lined up on the line of scrimmage 49.9 percent of the time under then-Patriots de facto defensive coordinator Brian Flores in 2018, close to 90 percent last season.
▪ Last August, Patriots coach Bill Belichick explained why Van Noy had more success in New England than Detroit:
“Sometimes, some players just fit into one situation and one scheme better than another. Kyle’s done a great job for us. He’s smart, he’s very instinctive, he does a good job with communication, he can call signals. We have multiple signal-callers on our defense, and that’s a good thing that helps us with communication and adjustments. He’s made a lot of big plays for us since we got him. I’m glad we have him. He’s done a great job.
“He mainly played inside in Detroit. He played outside in college, played inside at Detroit, and then we’ve used him in both spots – maybe a little more outside this year than inside, but he can definitely do both.”
▪ And in November, Belichick was effusive in his praise of Van Noy, saying: “It’s not easy to see the game from off the ball, in front of the ball and outside looking in on the line. It’s kind of two different pictures, but he does a very good job of it. He’s a very instinctive player and has very good spatial awareness for when he’s outside and when, as an outside player, you end up back inside – like covering hook-zones and things like that in the passing game. So, I wouldn’t say that that’s something that we’ve taught him.”
▪ Besides being a good pass rusher (34th among 107 edge rushers), Van Noy was very effective setting the edge in the run game, finishing fifth behind Calais Campbell, Von Miller, Carlos Dunlap and Arik Armstead among edge rushers in run defense.
That’s huge, because Miami’s edge players were deficient in that area last season. He missed only two tackles all year.
As a rusher, he was 20th among all edge players who got at least 400 snaps in the passing game, with the 6.5 sacks and 57 pressures. In pass coverage, he was targeted 10 times, with seven completions for 86 yards and a TD.
▪ Van Noy’s respect for Flores was evident in a 2018 radio interview, when he told Scott Zolak: “He’s able to communicate with everybody on the defense. So he’s able to get after guys when needed and he compliments them when needed. So I think he does a really good job. He brings a different element to the table. And we enjoy it, we embrace it and we just want to play hard for him.”
Last season, he told USA Today of Flores: “We kind of butt heads sometimes and that’s OK. It happens.”
▪ Lawson’s PFF ranking of 52nd of 107 edge players sells him short in this regard:
As a pass-rusher, PFF rated him 16th in effectiveness among all edge players who had at least 250 snaps. He had 6.5 sacks, 40 pressures in 262 pass rushing snaps, which is very good.
In the run game, only nine players with as many snaps had a higher run stop percentage, which PFF describes as running plays that constitute a loss or bad play for the offense.
He led the Bills with 17 tackles for loss. His coach, Shane McDermott, praised him last season for “playing at a high level.”
So why his overall grade barely better than middle of the pack?
Because he missed 11 tackles, among the most in the league for edge players. But perhaps it was an anomaly; he had three combined missed tackles from 2016 to 2018. Take away last year’s missed tackles, and he was one of the league’s better production-per-snap edge rushers in the league. “I’d argue Lawson was a bit underrated over the last two years,” PFF’s Ryan Smith tweeted.
Lawson didn’t start a game for Buffalo last season, started only 17 times in four years there and was on the field only 47 percent of their snaps last season. But he’s likely to start with Miami. And he comes with a strong recommendation from his former position coach at Clemson, Dolphins defensive line coach Marion Hobby.
▪ Flowers struggled at tackle as a first-round pick of the Giants but jump-started his career with impressive work at guard in his one season with the Redskins. He’ll likely play left guard in Miami, with Deiter likely getting a chance to compete at right guard, where he worked some at practice.
▪ ESPN’s Riddick rapped up the Dolphins’ day this way: “When you look at the players [added], what they are trying to do is build a team that has a lot of scheme versatility and players that have position versatile. Van Noy can play multiple positions. Byron Jones can play multiple positions. Shaq Lawson can flip between 3-4 and 4-3. This sounds like New England’s style. It’s what they’re trying to put together defensively.”
This story was originally published March 16, 2020 at 10:46 PM.
