He studied Richard Sherman. Now ex-Husky Sidney Jones falls into prime shot with Seahawks
It may have been the best steak Sidney Jones has ever not had.
The 25-year-old cornerback was in a steakhouse in Jacksonville last week, celebrating the end of his fourth preseason and training camp in the NFL.
His phone rang. It was his Jaguars general manager, Trent Baalke.
“I was sitting at dinner. My steak had just come out. And the phone rang and the exact same time,” Jones said Thursday. “I got the phone call — and just packed it up to-go. Lost my appetite.
“I’ve got to figure out the moving situation, a lot of moving parts. It shocked me.”
In a great way.
Jones, 25, had been traded, for the first time in his career. The native Californian was headed back to the West Coast. Back to the city in which he attended college and starred on the field, for the University of Washington Huskies.
“Amazing,” Jones said, three days before his new team’s season opener at the Indianapolis Colts. “I never thought I would have this feeling. When you get traded, you can’t even imagine that happening. You can’t prepare for it. But once I settled in and I was here for a day or two, I was like ‘Wow, I’m really here!’
“It’s a good feeling for sure.”
The Seahawks share the good vibes.
Loved his coaching
Coach Pete Carroll has been interested in Jones since he watched from across Lake Washington how then-UW defensive backs coach Jimmy Lake taught Jones the fundamentals of aggressively playing cornerback. Carroll loved Lake, now the Huskies’ head coach, schooled Jones in jamming receivers at the line of scrimmage at the snap, then turning and running with them. It was similar to the way Carroll teaches his step-kick technique to Seahawks cornerbacks.
Jones played it exquisitely at the highest level of amateur football. He and the fourth-ranked Huskies reached the College Football Playoff at the end of the 2016 season. They lost to champion Alabama in the Peach Bowl national semifinal.
Jones may have been a Seahawk in the 2017 NFL draft — or gone to another team way higher in the first round — had he not ruptured his Achilles tendon at UW’s Pro Day workout for league scouts in March 2017. His got hurt one month before the draft.
That dropped Jones, considered one of the three best cornerbacks in that year’s class, to the second round. The Philadelphia Eagles selected him 43rd overall.
The Seahawks that year selected defensive lineman Malik McDowell at 35th overall in round two with their top pick. Ten spots after the Eagles drafted Jones knowing he’d miss much of his rookie year injured, Seattle drafted LSU center Ethan Pocic.
McDowell never played a game for Seattle. He had a serious head injuries from a mysterious ATV accident soon after the Seahawks drafted him. Pocic was a three-year backup guard and tackle, then started at center for Seattle last season. This summer he lost his job to new starting center Kyle Fuller. Fuller will make his second career start at center Sunday in Indianapolis.
Jones was on Philadelphia’s injured list from July through the end of December 2017, when he played in the season finale of his rookie season. More injuries sidelined him for 26 of a possible 48 games and he started just eight games in three years for the Eagles. They released him in early September 2020.
The Jaguars immediately signed him to their practice squad, and the next week promoted him to the active roster. He played in nine games with a career-high six starts last season at right cornerback for Jacksonville. Yet he remains unfulfilled and untapped. He played on 27% of the Jaguars’ defensive snaps in 2020. He’s never played more than 31% of snaps in any NFL season.
Now he’s healthy and on a crash course to learn the Seahawks’ defensive system quickly. He’s in a scheme with a coach in a city that appreciate his skills and freshly remember how well he played at UW.
“Yeah, Jimmy did a good job with him. He coached the heck out of him. It was obvious,” Carroll said.
“Sidney’s been here for a week already, so he’s been working at it. He’s familiar with us and our style and technically how we coach guys. His coaches at UW took care of him in great fashion.
“He’s a really bright kid, too.”
How he fits
The 6-foot, 181-pound Jones doesn’t exactly fit the prototype of a Carroll cornerback with the Seahawks. He’s noticeably long, as is current starting right cornerback Tre Flowers.
Flowers is 6 feet 3 with unusually long, 33 7/8-inch arms. That is why Carroll drafted him in 2018 and converted him from college safety at Oklahoma State to Seattle cornerback.
Jones is not particularly long. He’s 6 feet tall, 181 pounds, with 31 1/2-inch arms. Carroll has famously never drafted a cornerback with arms shorter than 32 inches in his 12 drafts leading the Seahawks.
But it’s how he plays that has Jones poised to challenge Flowers, who is in the last year of his rookie contract after being benched for since-departed Quinton Dunbar last season, for the right-cornerback job.
In due time.
“He’s a complete football player,” Carrroll said. “We’ve known him for a long time of course being here. He’s aggressive. He’s a very savvy football player. He’s a really good technician. He’s a really smart player, an all-around athlete. He’s really well-equipped. He’s got good ball skills. We really have a lot of information on him, knowing the coaches that have coached him.
“We feel really fortunate to get him to come in here and let him have a chance to compete.”
Jones has played both sides in the NFL. He was primarily a left cornerback at UW. He said he’s been on the right side so far with the Seahawks.
Jones has been studying the prototype Carroll cornerback.
The best one, in fact.
Jones meets Sherman
“I used to study Richard Sherman all the time back when I was at University of Washington,” Jones said. “So, stepping and kick. All his stuff and his technique.”
Same with former Seahawks Super Bowl-winning defensive back and current defensive assistant coach DeShawn Shead.
“Shead, too,” Jones said. “I used to watch them and all the boys, so all of that is pretty familiar.”
Jones still remembers the first time he met Sherman, the currently unsigned All-Pro cornerback who won a Super Bowl and played in another starring with Earl Thomas and Kam Chancellor in Seattle’s Legion of Boom secondary during the 2010s.
“It’s a crazy story,” Jones said. “I just got drafted, in 2017, I was doing my rehab back at U-Dub. I was at Joey’s (restaurant) one night then he walked in. Him and his other teammates, Earl and them walked in.
“I went and said, ‘What’s up,’ and chopped it up with them. I was chilling with them the whole night. We got to do some stuff after, too, so it was cool.”
Now he’s perhaps weeks away from having the job Sherman had from 2011 until after Sherman toe his Achilles late in the 2017 season: Seahawks starting cornerback.
How’s Jones progressing, on the eve of the opener?
“It’s been a short time,” defensive coordinator Ken Norton Jr. said. “At this point, you want to get him out on the grass to run around a little bit so we can see the rawness of him, the running, the hitting, and being able to be coachable.
“So far, so good.”
Jones sees this as his chance to redeem what’s so far been a deflating NFL career.
“Not how I wanted to start off, obviously,” he said. “I had high expectations for myself, being that I feel like I’m a great player. Bumps in the road. Adversity hits. You have to find a way to combat that and jump over that hoop.
“It’s been a slow start. But I feel like I made strides last year, and I hope to continue that going forward.
“Oh, for sure, I’m here to compete, to do my job, and to win. So I keep it simple.”
