Name: 'Did he kill somebody?' Arizona Cardinals were at a loss why Josh Jones slid in NFL draft
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'Did he kill somebody?' Arizona Cardinals were at a loss why Josh Jones slid in NFL draft

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Arizona RepublicView CommentsThe tension in the air wasn’t just thick in the Josh Jones family household during the first two days of the NFL draft. It was suffocating. And it was growing toxic with the passing of every selection.“It was tough. It was tough watching all the picks go by,” the offensive tackle from the University of Houston recalled. “The room’s quiet, it’s eerie in there. Everybody’s ready to celebrate, but you don’t know where you’re going to go.”The 6-foot-5, 319-pound Jones, who started all 45 games he played in college for the Cougars, thought he had a pretty good idea where he was going to go. He figured it was going to be somewhere in the first round. That’s where most mock drafts had him pegged, after all.In their final mocks for NFL.com, analysts Peter Schrager had Jones going No.14 overall to the Buccaneers, Daniel Jeremiah projected him going No. 26 to the Dolphins and Bucky Brooks had him slotted at No. 30 to the Packers.In three separate mock drafts, ESPN’s Mel Kiper Jr. had Jones going as high as No.15 to Denver, dropping to No. 26 to Miami and finally, dropping out of the first round altogether and going first overall in the second round, No. 33 overall, to Cincinnati.Drafting LSU quarterback Joe Burrow as the overall No.1 and following that up with a long, athletic tackle like Jones to help protect him, Kiper suggested, would make perfect sense. “This would be the ideal top two picks for Cincinnati,” he said.But not only did Jones not get drafted in the first round on Thursday, he didn’t get drafted in the second round the following day, either. That got everybody’s attention, including the Cardinals. They didn’t own a second-round pick this year but were keeping their fingers crossed that Jones would still be there when it came their turn to pick in the third round at No. 72 overall.“A lot of praying. A lot of group prayers at that point,” Cardinals coach Kliff Kingsbury told Arizona Sports 98.7-FM this week. “You look at the board and it was kind of wiped out all around him and we were trying to figure out why.”Kingsbury decided to grab his cell phone and call two of his buddies at Houston – head coach Dana Holgorsen, who gave Kingsbury his first coaching gig in 2008, and Brandon Jones, the Cougars’ co-offensive coordinator and offensive line coach, who worked under Kingsbury at Texas Tech from 2017-18.“We’re calling saying, ‘What’s going on? Did he kill somebody last night? Is there something we don’t know about? What’s the issue?’ ” Kingsbury said. “They were kind of scratching their heads as well.”Jones sat next to his mother on the couch and tried to wait as patiently as he could. The disappointment, though, was killing him. Everyone in the room sensed it and tried to be as quiet as possible as the picks kept rolling by.Why was a player who was ranked as the 14th-best prospect overall by the analytics website ProFootballFocus, which gave him a 93.2 grade last season as a senior, the highest grade ever given to a collegiate offensive tackle, still plummeting?“I did not know, my agent did not know that this was going to happen,” Jones told reporters Friday night after finally being selected by the Cardinals in the third round. “We thought we were going to go in one or two, so as the picks kept going, we were in conversation.“He said he didn’t know. He wasn’t hearing anything from teams. He didn’t hear anything negative. Nothing negative about the combine or anything about my character.”It didn’t make sense.Jones missed three games as a senior, but he only allowed one sack, no quarterback hits and only three hurries in the nine games he started. His technique improved dramatically from his junior year. He also performed well at the Senior Bowl and the combine, where his skill tests compared similarly to USC’s Austin Jackson and Georgia’s Isaiah Wilson, who went 18th and 29th overall, respectively, in the first round.“He was certainly not a player I anticipated seeing at the 72nd spot,” Cardinals General Manager Steve Keim said.Though Jones played left tackle his entire college career, Arizona plans to get him ready at both tackle positions. D.J. Humphries is locked in on the left side for at least the next three seasons and the Cardinals brought back&nbsp;Marcus Gilbert and Justin Murray to initially handle the right side in 2020.Jones, though, seems like a perfect long-term solution in Kingsbury’s fast-moving offense, considering it’s a system Jones played under Holgorsen in Houston.“The pulling, the getting out in space, different things we do, really play to his strong suits,” Kingsbury said during a conference call. “I definitely think there will be a comfort level there for him that will allow him to hopefully play at a high level sooner rather than later.”Jones is just glad the other wait is over and that the draft is behind him.“Sometimes, things don’t work out in your favor,” he said. “Sometimes, you just have to play with the cards you’re dealt. I’m happy I landed with the Cardinals, a great team and a rising team. Everything is going up with a great quarterback (in Kyler Murray) and now you have someone to protect him.“Thank you to the Arizona Cardinals for actually taking me. They got a great ball player and I’m going to make those other guys kick themselves in the butt for missing on me throughout my career.” View Comments

Arizona RepublicView CommentsThe tension in the air wasn’t just thick in the Josh Jones family household during the first two days of the NFL draft. It was suffocating. And it was growing toxic with the passing of every selection.“It was tough. It was tough watching all the picks go by,” the offensive tackle from the University of Houston recalled. “The room’s quiet, it’s eerie in there. Everybody’s ready to celebrate, but you don’t know where you’re going to go.”The 6-foot-5, 319-pound Jones, who started all 45 games he played in college for the Cougars, thought he had a pretty good idea...

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Bob McManaman

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'Did he kill somebody?' Arizona Cardinals were at a loss why Josh Jones slid in NFL draft

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