Jarvis Jones underperforming?

I'm not sure what it is and I can't quite put my finger on it. Is Jarvis Jones playing at an acceptable level given the first round selection? Maybe I need to focus my attention more on watching him, but I just don't see him as a playmaker. I just see him getting shoved around out there.

Help me out here guys. I want to pull for the guy but I'm having a hard time. Am I missing something?

 

He's fresh off an injury. That said, I think he looks explosive out there. I saw him on a few occasions driving the tackle back pretty good. I think he gets better as the weeks go by. It would be nice to see him really creating havoc during a playoff run.

 

Explosive? Really? Honestly, I want to see that. I'd like to say he looks explosive but I just don't see it. I see him get gobbled up by one blocker and shoved past the pocket regularly. This guy was talked about at one time as possibly being the OVERALL number one draft pick. I'd say at the very least he's failed to live up to the hype so far and I realize the injury has contributed to that this year. I hope he gives us reason for optimism with his play the remainder of this season but so far I've been disappointed in his performance.

 

Another off season in the weight room and more time with Peezy will help him a lot. The injury was a pretty big set back for the kid. While he certainly isn't setting the world on fire, he's defonitely shown improvement in the little time he's seen the field this season. Hopefully this continues throughout the rest of the season and into the next. We really need him to become the player he is capable of.

 

plus i think he is gona be accident prone, but wishing him all luck in the world

 

He's too small and not strong enough to play outside in our system. I hated the pick at the time and still do. I think the guy is at best going to turn into an average player and probably won't even be re-signed. I haven't seen any explosiveness from him nor have I seen him driving anyone back. JJ was a plug and play guy, or was supposed to be. It's looking like another 1st round bust

 

The signs were there coming out of Jones' Pro Day. Lousy 40 time. Lousy 225 bench.... The pick reminds me a lot of the Alonzo Jackson pick.

 

He was getting thrown around today like a rag doll. We said last year he needed to get stronger. Why won't he listen to us...... Lol

 

Obviously not where he needs to be especially rushing the passer, but a few times I noticed he held the point of attack on the run which is where he was struggling at times. I guess I am still optimistic, hopefully he can stay healthy

 

Oh I think we're all trying to maintain an element of optimism where JJ is concerned, but the other side of the coin is that many of us feel that his overall performance so far has been below the line. I've seen a couple of people use the dreaded B word and I'm not ready to go there yet. JJ needs to start demonstrating that he belongs in the NFL and that he's ready to assume the mantle of being the next great Steeler OLB. Please?

 

I don't know, but it seems it would save us 15 yards and a first down if he doesn't get to the qb.

 

To be fair to the guy, he did collect 17 tackles, 2 sacks, and a FF in the first four games before his injury. He definitely looked better then he did as a rookie. I think he'll be good at least

 

Underperforming? Depends on the definition. Bust? That's ridiculous.

As a rookie, did he light up the world like the best of the best rookies do? Hell no. But did he do better than most Steelers rookies? Yes. He saw the field, he played good run defense, and he got better as time went on. He was not a "plug and play" star, but he made it to the field. For the Steelers' defense, that qualifies as plug and play.

In his second year, he looked better in the first couple of games, before getting hurt. He's just now back, he's playing half the snaps, and his upper body strength must have taken a step back while his wrist was injured.

The upside for me is that his body has room to improve. He could add some muscle without adding weight, making him both stronger and faster. We knew that going in. He was not in good shape in college; he was just skating by on talent.

I don't think he'll ever live up to the expectations set when he was still in college. But I don't think he's nothing. He'll never be James Harrison, but I disagree with those that say his ceiling is Clark Haggans. I could see him as a Jason Worilds level guy. And as far as I'm concerned, the worst thing about Worilds is that he didn't get any playing time until his contract was up. Jones will have a head start on that.

And no, I don't consider that a bad return on investment. There really wasn't much else I wanted at that spot. Trading down was the only other option to me, and I don't think the value was there for that.

Another? How far back are you going? Jamain Stephens? If you're talking about anyone recently, I don't think you know the meaning of the word. I'd hate to derail this into a debate about Mendenhall and Ziggy, but if those are your busts, you should take a peek at the rest of the league sometime.

 

It might be unfair but I think Steelers fans tend to look at things from the "Steelers Standard" and we are always looking for the "next" Mean Joe or "next" Jack Lambert or Rod Woodson or Hines or whoever. It is also sorta like we "expect" the "rest of the league" to have a lot of misses but we somehow expect to stay above "misses". We really have sorta earned that reputation though because we don't build through FA or trades but almost strictly through the draft and I guess that philosophy leaves much less room for error. With drafts like 08 still fresh in people's minds and our defense clearly having slipped in the past few years I suppose it might be a natural first instinct to start blaming things on how we've drafted. I always hesitate to do it because you have to think of who you COULD have had for that argument to really have any merit. Have the Steelers whiffed on a few in their day? Absolutely. But more often than not we get it right and the trophy case stands to prove it.

 

ziggy was a big bust ... now with jarvis the jury is still out while a safety like reid would have solve a lot of problem

 

In what world is Ziggy Hood not a bust? The guy was downright awful, on top of being a terrible fit for our defence.

 

Out of curiosity, do you know how well he has done for the Jags? I've been irritated that we seem to pick so many 4-3 guys and just figure that maybe they don't have as much impact for us because they're not made for our system. I could be wrong though.

 

5000%

I couldn't agree more. I invite anyone to go back and look at his collage highlight reel that they were showing right at draft time. He didn't dominate at all. It seemed like he was lucky to be around the ball or QB for various reasons on any given play rather push, motor or tenacity.

It all seemed so obvious to me and I was shaking my head the whole time he was in the conversation. I so wanted to be wrong about him.

 

Think maybe we can give a guy a year to really see what the NFL is like and also know how to protect himself before we say he sucks?

 

Well, for starters, I disagree with your assessment that he was downright awful for us. A lot of people agreed that he was in the okay-to-pretty-good range, but not making splash plays. I pretty much agree with that. But a lot of people also said even if that's true, that's not good enough for a 1st round pick. I think a lot of people lost perspective of the spectrum of quality - they see the options as Aaron Smith or Brett Keisel or Bad. I hope Cam Thomas put things into perspective... Ziggy was way, way better than him. If we'd been able to afford to keep Ziggy, you really think we'd have had as many problems against the run as we have this year? Now that we've seen Thomas, go back and watch some tape of Ziggy, and he might look like Aaron Smith by comparison.

But whatever. You asked in what world Ziggy isn't a bust. I'd like to answer that with a post I wrote a couple years ago, right after the 2013 draft. It was in a this thread.

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In my opinion, this is all about two things: how people view draft status and the definition of a bust.

If Hood was a 7th rounder he'd be praised by the same people calling him a bust. Some really do say that he flat out sucks, that he gets dominated every play (diehardsteel), but plenty admit he's a quality starter, and simply demand more than quality starts from a first round pick. To me it's just like the complaints about Timmons from before. The idea was that even though he may be a good player on our defense, that's simply not enough and therefore he is a bust, or at least bust-ish. We've gotten used to some straight up awesome first round picks. Hampton, Troy, Ben, Heath, Holmes (while it lasted), Timmons, Pouncey... Some people think all 1st round picks need to be big splash impact game changers, not just good players. I say it's downright impossible for that to happen every year, especially for every team, so take what you can get. Instead of comparing him to some of the best draft picks of the decade, compare him to who else was drafted around that point in that draft at positions we needed, and look at the strength of the draft class, and keep in mind he was #32, not #16.

When I look back on that draft and who was available and what our needs were, I'm not sure who would have been a better pick. Most of the guys who turned out to be the best players to come out of round 2 from that year were either at positions we had no business drafting in the first round, or guys whose value didn't match the spot at the time. There were three safeties (Delmas, Byrd, William Moore), a RB (McCoy), an ILB (Laurinaitis), two OLBs (Barwin, Kruger), two interior linemen (Unger, Levitre), and a CB (Sean Smith). In 2009 Clark and Polamalu were locked down as starters and both still in their 20s, so any safety pick would have been a complete waste. We'd just taken Rashard Mendenhall the year before, so McCoy would have been stupid. Harrison and Woodley make Barwin and Kruger bad picks. Unger and Levitre were positions of need, but at the time the consensus was that #32 was too high for them. Both were seen as mid 2nd round guys, which is where they went. They have since outperformed that status. I actually quite wanted Levitre, and was hoping we'd trade up for him in the 2nd. In retrospect, Laurinaitis might have worked out. 2009 was the year Foote left, and Laurinaitis would have been the heir to Farrior. But then again, Foote was supposed to be the heir to Farrior, but Potsie wasn't slowing down with age the way he was supposed to. They were probably feeling at the time like it wasn't as urgent a need as DE, which had Aaron Smith aging and could use Hood rotationally (and it often takes forever for guys to learn that position, especially since so few play it in college). Sean Smith would have been seen as a big reach at #32, and plus at the time the coaches thought Gay was going to be awesome. And Hood's value was right around where we took him. He was considered a #25-#35 guy, if I'm remembering correctly.

Yeah, if you scour the picks after ours, you're bound to find a couple that might have worked out better. But unless you have the very best pick in the draft, that's how it always goes. And if you take away everything we've learned about everyone over the last 4 years, and put yourself in the shoes of the GM at the time of the pick, it's easy to see why Ziggy was the pick. It might have been nice to trade down and still nab Unger or Levitre, but who knows how possible that was? And let's not forget that for all of Ziggy's underachieving, he has already paid dividends that not everyone sees. When Aaron Smith went down in 2007, our entire defense fell apart. Nick Eason and Travis Kirschke replaced Smith. Our run defense went from it's usual best to terrible by our standards, and sometimes terrible by anyone's standards.

2007
Aaron Smith: 72 rush ypg, 229 total ypg
Eason/Kirschke: 111 rush ypg, 306 total ypg

And that was no bad defense. The very next season they were one of the greatest defenses of all time, with mostly the same players. Smith went down again in 2010, this time replaced by Ziggy Hood.

2010
Aaron Smith: 63 rush ypg, 297 total ypg
Ziggy Hood: 63 rush ypg, 260 total ypg

2010 was the year we went to the Super Bowl, and - laugh all you want - if we didn't have Ziggy Hood, we may not have gotten there. And on the list of guys whose fault it is we didn't win that Super Bowl, Ziggy's name isn't on it. Had we won, I don't care if he quit football the next day - he'd have been worth the draft pick. You don't have to be a playmaker to make a difference. Being a good, solid player that isn't a gaping hole on the field is a good thing, especially for defenders. The comparisons to Nick Eason kill me. He and Ziggy are not close. Eason was a hole. I heard the same stuff last preseason about Corbin Bryant being better. It's ludicrous.


Now let's look at what a bust is. All I hear is that 1st round picks are supposed to be dynamic, game changing play makers. That a good, solid, durable player is nice to have, but getting one of those in the 1st round means he's a bust of a pick. To me, if what you get is good, then that's good, and that's it. If your 1st rounder that hasn't reached his potential plays like a 2nd or 3rd rounder that has, that's not as good as you'd like, but consider the alternative. Plenty of picks from all of those rounds turn out to be just plain awful. If in 5 years it's apparent that Markus Wheaton should have been our 2nd round pick and Bell should have been our 3rd round pick, who cares? Should we ride Bell about how he didn't live up to his status? Or be happy we got a player that's doing good things for us? When I look back at our 1st round picks all the way to 2000, I see amazing players and I see good players (and some TBD). I don't see any busts. And Cajun, your definition of a bust includes failing to reach your potential. I just totally disagree with that. If you have HOF potential, but you only make 1 Pro Bowl and play well for 12 seasons, are you a bust? A player failing to reach his potential is always disappointing, but let the performances stand for themselves for what they are, good or bad, instead of imagining what could have been. Ike Taylor still doesn't play to his potential. He never has. But even if we'd taken him in the 1st round, I wouldn't call him a bust.

For fun, I made a list of all the #32 overall picks from 2000-2010. The ones left in black are what I'd call good, solid starters (some of them are a mixed bag of highs and lows). The ones in blue are more than solid starters, and the ones in red are less.

It should be noted that this is rough and there's a lot of leeway here, and you could make arguments for guys to go up or down, but I think this is more or less accurate...ish.

2000 Trung Canidate
2001 Todd Heap
2002 Patrick Ramsey
2003 Tyler Brayton
2004 Ben Watson
2005 Logan Mankins
2006 Mathias Kiwanuka LB NYG
2007 Anthony Gonzalez WR IND
2008 Phillip Merling DE MIA
2009 Ziggy Hood DE PIT
2010 Patrick Robinson CB NO

And for fun, here are the #16 overall picks from the same years:

2000 Julian Peterson LB SF
2001 Santana Moss WR NYJ
2002 William Green RB CLE
2003 Troy Polamalu S PIT (#15 Jerome McDougle DE PHI, #17 Bryant Johnson WR ARI)
2004 Shawn Andrews OG PHI
2005 Travis Johnson DT HOU
2006 Jason Allen S MIA
2007 Justin Harrell DT GB
2008 Dominique Rodgers-Cromartie CB ARI
2009 Larry English LB SD
2010 Derrick Morgan DE TEN

And, for more fun, the #10 picks from those years:

2000 Travis Taylor WR BAL
2001 Jamal Reynolds DE GB
2002 Levi Jones OT CIN
2003 Terrell Suggs LB BAL
2004 Dunta Robinson CB HOU
2005 Mike Williams WR DET
2006 Matt Leinart QB ARI
2007 Amobi Okoye DT HOU
2008 Jerod Mayo LB NE
2009 Michael Crabtree WR SF
2010 Tyson Alualu DT JAC


...And Ziggy Hood is a bust? Looks to me like we should be relieved we picked a player that's still in the league. I'm happy to admit that he has not played up to his potential, and I'm happy to admit that I was hoping for more than we've gotten so far. You could even call him the worst 1st round pick of ours since 1999. But to say "he hasn't played like a 1st rounder", or "he hasn't played like ___ overall"... If you look at the evidence above you can see that there is no "way" that these guys play. They're all over the map, and it's that way all over the whole draft. Troy Polamalu played like a 1st rounder. So did Jerome McDougle. Because that's how first rounders play, clearly, given how many of these guys turn out to be terrible. So I think a better way to say it might be, "He hasn't played up to my/our standards of what we all hope to get from #32 overall" And that might be true, and that's a bummer, but it doesn't make him a bust. Just thought this might add some perspective.

 

B...
I hated this pick before it was made and called him a bust before the draft. Hopefully he will prove me wrong, but it's not looking good by any stretch of the imagination.

 

Jarvis seems to be getting better push this year, he is really close. He looked much better his first 3 games before his injury. He has a hurt wrist which I'm sure won't help his strength. He hasn't show much yet. But, look at Cam Heyward, everyone was calling him a bust, and he kicked it on year 3 and has been a stud since then.

 

This is how I feel about Jarvis... He just gets by on what he's got, his ceiling doesn't seem real high.

In our 3-4 it may or may not be reasonable to expect this, but we need 10 sacks each from our OLB's. Can Jarvis become this kind of OLB for us?

 

I think Jarvis is solid or will become solid, but we need a playmaker at OLB, and I don't think he's become that or has shown he's capable of that yet. same as ziggy. so much more is expected of first rounders to do this. being a difference maker and a play maker is a tough assignment. remember it took Timmons 3 years to really see the field and that's worked out pretty well. he's still getting better and far and away better than he was in his first 5 years.