Indianapolis, IN
Why former starting CB Jaylon Jones is buried on Colts depth chart
INDIANAPOLIS — The fall Jaylon Jones has taken down the Colts depth chart has been one of the most surprising developments of this season.
Jones, a full-time starter in his first two years in Indianapolis, played only four defensive snaps against the 49ers on Monday, a night when Jones was the team’s clear-cut fifth cornerback despite injuries to Sauce Gardner and Charvarius Ward.
Monday night’s game was the fourth time in seven games that Jones has played fewer than five snaps, and from the sounds of it, even an abysmal defensive performance that hemorrhaged 440 yards and 41 points is no guarantee that Jones will be elevated on the depth chart for this week’s game against Jacksonville.
“We evaluate each guy each week, and certainly, everything will be up at that position to be evaluated going forward,” defensive coordinator Lou Anarumo said. “We’ll look at all avenues.”
The team’s reluctance to play Jones stems from a hamstring injury that plagued the third-year cornerback throughout the summer.
Jones first suffered the hamstring injury during organized team activities in the summer, injured it again a couple of days into training camp and pulled it significantly again in the season opener, robbing Jones of precious time to learn how he fits in Anarumo’s scheme.
“Obviously, starting the year with the injury kind of set him back,” Colts defensive backs coach Jerome Henderson said. “If we would have had him throughout all of training camp and continuing to play, obviously, I think he plays better.”
Jones has never been through an injury like that one.
He dealt with a significant hamstring injury in college that forced him to miss the first two games of a season, but Jones had never missed that much time before.
The experience taught him something.
“Trusting my process, man, understanding I need to do all the right things, make sure my body’s ready to go and I’m available,” Jones said. “A learning experience.”
The time in the training room seems to have driven a wedge between Jones and the field. Jones has played 149 defensive snaps in seven games this season, starting against Pittsburgh and Jacksonville, but he hasn’t been able to hold onto that spot consistently. In those snaps, Jones has limited opponents to 9 of 18 passing for 117 yards, a touchdown and an 89.4 rating when he’s the nearest defender in coverage, according to the NFL’s Next Gen Stats.
But Indianapolis has consistently chosen trade pickup Mekhi Blackmon over Jones in a pinch; now, undrafted rookie Johnathan Edwards and street free agent Cameron Mitchell have passed a player who started 27 games the past two seasons and played 1,932 snaps for the Colts. Of those three, only Blackmon has a better rating against him than Jones (88.4) and he’s given up a higher completion rate.
Henderson rebuffed a question last week about whether Jones is a poor fit for Anarumo’s defense.
“None of them are perfect,” Henderson said. “Even the best ones have things in their game you wish you could tweak and change. … You try to grow them in the area he needs to grow, keep him confident in the areas that he’s really good at. If he’s in, use him to his strengths.”
Indianapolis believes the 6-2, 200-pound Jones is best suited to playing against tight ends.
“He’s doing well in the role that he plays,” Henderson said. “He’s going to go guard the really good tight end pass-catchers in this league.”
From a philosophical standpoint, the role sounds weighty, particularly for an Indianapolis defense that has given up the second-most yards in the NFL to tight ends this season.
Practically, Jones is playing more of a bit part.
Anarumo has talked a lot about getting more defensive backs onto the field to avoid pitting a tight end against linebackers regularly, and Jones seems to be the perfect solution.
Except that the Colts actually reserve those looks for a handful of passing situations each game. If a team attacks Indianapolis on first or second down, an opposing tight end is often looking for holes in the zone against Colts linebackers Zaire Franklin and Germaine Pratt.
“We don’t go into any game looking at linebackers covering tight ends at all,” Anarumo said. “Our deal is to try to match up, and that would be more in the true passing situations. … That was a little bit of the predicament last night.”
Jones is handling his reduced role without complaining publicly.
He has tried to focus on his own game, rather than the decisions that have kept him on the sidelein.
“Looking in the mirror, being consistent within myself, within my game,” Jones said. “Once I do that, I think it takes care of everything else. … Being consistent with my process, zoning in on the little details. I’m just happy doing my role, playing my role, trying to help my team win games.”
But it has not been easy.
“In moments like this, just growing,” Jones said. “I think I became more of a man this year, just because there’s going to be adversity in the road, there’s going to be bumps in the road, things like that, but I’m just doing my role, doing what I can for this team so we can win games.”
Even though it’s hard to play a big role in a team’s wins or losses when a cornerback spends all but a handful of snaps on the sideline.
Joel A. Erickson and Nathan Brown cover the Colts all season. Get more coverage on IndyStarTV and with the Colts Insider newsletter.
INDIANAPOLIS (WISH) — The debate over how to pay for road repairs in Indianapolis moved one step closer to a final decision on Tuesday night.
An Indianapolis City-County Council committee voted 7-3 to recommend approval of a proposal that would increase vehicle registration-related taxes in Marion County.
Some councilors said the proposal would be the best way to secure money for road improvements. News 8 first reported on the proposal in May.
But some people at the committee meeting questioned whether they should be asked to pay when they’re already feeling financial pressure. One said, “There’s a lot of concerns out with this, there’s just too much all at once. Utility costs, everything’s going crazy, so we should not have a total eclipse of the wallet.”
Another person testified, “I have to have a ‘Mad Max’ vehicle just to drive on the roads. So, I’m just asking that you look at another way to fund this instead of raising our taxes.”
Under the proposal, most Marion County drivers with vehicles under 11,000 pounds would pay a flat $100 annual fee when registering their vehicles. Larger vehicles would be subject to the county wheel tax with a flat annual fee of $240.
The council hopes to raise $50 million, which would make it eligible to receive $50 million in state funding.
The match amount would increase each year incrementally.
Democratic Councilor Andy Nielsen said, “We’d love to see other ideas and other plans for how we do that. The entire city council and administration has known that this $50 million opportunity has been sitting on the books, and we’re the first ones to actually put forward a plan to actually get there.”
Democratic Mayor Joe Hogsett has disagreed with the proposal.
If the City-County Council passes the tax hike at its next hearing, he could veto it.
Council President Maggie Lewis, another Democrat, said of the mayor in his third four-year term, “He has not vetoed anything we put forth since he’s been the mayor of our great city, so not sure exactly how to read that, but again, he does have that ability to do so.”
Some on the council argued that if no action was taken on the wheel tax, the city would still need to manage a large transportation network, risk losing new state funding, and face higher long-term maintenance costs.
Lewis said, “At the end of the day, our colleagues believe this is the right path to ensure our infrastructure is what we deserve as the capitalist state of Indiana.”
The proposal goes to the full council for a vote on July 6. If approved, the new taxes would take effect Jan. 1.
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INDIANAPOLIS (WISH) — Much of Indiana was under a severe thunderstorm watch until 11 p.m. EDT Tuesday, the National Weather Service Storm Prediction Center said.
Indianapolis and the surrounding counties were in the watch area. The watch extends into Illinois.
Counties in the watch are Adams, Allen, Bartholomew, Benton, Blackford, Boone, Brown, Carroll, Cass, Clay, Clinton, Delaware, DeKalb, Elkhart, Fountain, Fulton, Grant, Greene, Hamilton, Hancock, Hendricks, Henry, Howard, Huntington, Jasper, Jay, Johnson, Kosciusko, LaGrange, La Porte, Madison, Marion, Marshall, Miami, Monroe, Montgomery, Morgan, Newton, Noble, Owen, Parke, Porter, Pulaski, Putnam, Randolph, Shelby, St. Joseph, Starke, Steuben, Sullivan, Tippecanoe, Tipton, Vermillion, Vigo, Wabash, Warren, Wells, White and Whitley.
WRTV Meteorologist Adam Fieck said counties farther north were expected to have more severe weather than others in Indiana, based on a prediction for the areas. Fieck said storms will begin to work into the Indianapolis metro area as early as 5-6 p.m. Storms will exit the area by 11 p.m.
Fieck and WISH-TV Meteorologist Keith Gibson said main threats will be for gusty winds and localized heavy downpours. Small hail up to the size of a pea is possible, with a low-end risk for a brief spin-up tornado farther north.
After the storms, Gibson said variably cloudy skies are likely overnight, with cool lows in the mid-50s.
After the storms, Gibson said variably cloudy skies are likely overnight, with cool lows in the mid-50s.
On Wednesday, high-end severe weather appears likely in the region as an unusually strong storm system, by June standards, was expected.
WRTV Meteorologist Ryan Morse said two rounds of showers and storms are expected, with the second being the bigger issue. A moderate risk is in place for spots northwest of Indianapolis, while most of central Indiana is at an enhanced risk.
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