The San Francisco 49ers hosted former Miami Dolphins cornerback Jack Jones on Friday. ESPN’s Adam Schefter reported he signed a one-year deal with the Niners. Jones started all 17 games for the Dolphins last season and played over 91 percent of the snaps. Jones also played nearly 1,000 snaps the year before with the Las Vegas Raiders, where he started 16 games.
Jones, a fourth-round pick out of Arizona State in 2022, was targeted 52 times last season. He allowed 34 completions his way, including eight touchdowns for 417 yards. Jones also allowed eight touchdowns on 67 targets in 2024. However, he’s found a way to be competitive, as evidenced by his 18 combined pass breakups and four interceptions(two of them drops) in the previous two seasons.
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Jones was relatively undersized coming into the NFL, AT 5’10 3/4 and 171 pounds. Some of that size can be mitigated by playing to the wide side of the field. The Dolphins used Jones as the “field” cornerback on 82.1 percent of his snaps. When you play to the far side of the field, you’re not going to be targeted often. That was the case for Jones, despite playing as often as he did.
Jones seldom rushed the passer, with four blitzes last season. He only had four in 2024 as well. When Jones wasn’t playing field corner, he would move into the slot(20 snaps) or walk down to a dime linebacker (10 snaps) spot on occasion.
Through the first 16 weeks of the season, Jones was targeted at the 2nd-lowest rate among cornerbacks with at least 150 coverage snaps. Jones led that same group with the fewest yards allowed per coverage snap. The touchdowns Jones did allow were on downfield targets. With the way that teams are using cornerbacks in coverage in today’s NFL, there are ways to avoid matchups where a player like Jones ends up on a player like Marvin Harrison Jr., for example. That’s what it sounded like Miami attempted to do last season.
Here’s a look at the 49ers’ cornerback room with the addition of Jones:
Renardo Green
Darrell Luter Jr.
Eli Apple
Deommodore Lenoir
Siran Neal
Tre Tomlinson
Upton Stout
Nate Hobbs
Jakob Robinson
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