What You Need to Know:

• The Packers re-signed Jones for $48 million over 4 years on the brink of free agency. That $12 million annual average ties Joe Mixon for 6th-highest among RBs.
• Green Bay also let Jamaal Williams walk in free agency. Williams drew 27% of carries and 6.7% of targets last season.
• AJ Dillon steps up in his place. We’ll see what the team’s usage for him looks like. He caught 21 total passes over 3 years as a workhorse at Boston College, though. So it’s fair to expect him to fall short of Williams’ receiving involvement.
• Dillon’s size would suggest he’s a shoo-in for short-yardage/goal-line work. But Jones has been busy near the end zone. He ranked 8th in the league in carry share inside the 5-yard line in 2019, according to Pro Football Reference (72.2%) and tied for 10th last season, despite missing 2 games.
  • Jones saw 60% of Green Bay’s carries in that range, despite seeing a smaller share of total carries inside the 10 (51.3%) and in the red zone overall (50.7%).
• Overall, Jones ranked 5th in Football Outsiders’ success rate, a measure of how often a RB gains what’s needed in a given situation.
• TDs boosted Jones to his top-3 fantasy finish across formats in 2019, when he scored on 6.8% of carries and 6.7% of total touches. But Jones still finished 5th among RBs across formats last season despite sliding to 4.5% rushing TD rate and scoring on 4.4% of his total touches.
• Both of those rates landed above average for the position, but neither was outlandish. Jones tied for 30th in rushing TD rate among 91 RBs who scored at least once on the ground. He tied for 39th in TDs per touch.
• Football Outsiders rushing metrics had him performing near-identically between the past 2 seasons. Jones ranked 4th in rushing DYAR each season; 7th and 5th in DVOA.
• On the receiving side, however, Jones went from 23rd in DYAR and 28th in DVOA among 49 qualifying backs in 2019 to 30th and 33rd out of 50 last season.

Draft Sharks Bottom Line:

Jones has been an efficient, productive runner over his 2 seasons as the clear backfield leader in Green Bay. The Packers’ financial commitment to him this spring shows they believe he’s a key to the offense, which should keep his volume up. Shedding Jamaal Williams in favor of AJ Dillon ascending to the #2 role brings uncertainty, but Dillon comes with less proof as a receiving option than Williams.

Of course, the greatest unknown remains the Aaron Rodgers situation. Rodgers’ return would obviously be good news for the entire offense. His departure? Well, since the start of 2008, we’ve only seen 18 of 190 regular-season Packers games without Rodgers involved. And his replacement would be a 2nd-year QB who got no work after arriving in Round 1 of last year’s draft. So we really don’t know what the impact would be.

If Rodgers remains, Jones looks good in the 2nd half of Round 1. If Rodgers goes (or just sits), then the risk obviously increases.