Mike Vrabel goes back to a player he already trusts
Twelve seasons behind him. Thirty-four years old. And a contract signed in the middle of opening weekend.
The New England Patriots have added DaQuan Jones on a one-year deal worth up to $6 million, with a $3.5 million base salary, per NFL Network.
Nobody is calling this a coup. It is a repair job. New England lost its opener, sits at 0-1, and the interior of that defensive line was badly short on bulk.
Vrabel knows precisely what arrives. He coached Jones in Tennessee from 2018 to 2020. You do not sign a 34-year-old interior lineman on a hunch. You sign one whose strengths, and whose ceiling, you have already watched up close for three years.
Try it for $0.99.
Fifty-one games in Buffalo, fifty-one starts
Jones comes straight from four seasons with the Buffalo Bills, an AFC East rival the Patriots see twice a year. Fifty-one games there. Fifty-one starts. He never once came off the bench.
Ten sacks, 31 quarterback pressures, 99 tackles over that stretch. Numbers that undersell the job. He is the sort of tackle who swallows two blockers so the linebacker behind him gets to fill the stat sheet.
Career totals: 167 games, 161 starts, 20 sacks, 372 tackles, three fumble recoveries, one interception. Titans from 2014 to 2020, a year in Carolina in 2021, then Buffalo.
From Penn State to the back nine of a career
Tennessee took him in the fourth round in 2014, out of Penn State. A dozen seasons later he lands with the coach who got the most out of him, on a team already chasing a result, and he happens to know the Bills’ offensive front from the inside.
This will not lead anybody’s broadcast. It might be worth three stops on third-and-short in November.
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