by Jared Smola

At the risk of being crucified, I’m going to go ahead and recommend buying low on Thomas Jones. This may be a pointless argument since it seems like 90% of Draft Sharks subscribers drafted Jones (and aren’t too happy about it right now), but hear me out before you flip your lid.

There’s a reason we named this guy our 2008 Breakout Player. In that particular article, John Miller wrote: “Jones is one of the hardest working and top conditioned backs in the league. ‘Every time I go to the weight room, he’s in there,’ said [Jets HC Eric] Mangini. He simply runs with passion.  Don’t forget Jones has flirted with fantasy success before, finishing with a #12 ranking in 2005 and hanging around the top-20 two other times.”

Jones is no slouch. He’s a talented, hard-working RB. And he also takes pride in the work he does on the football field, so you know he’s not happy about his poor start to the 2008 season.

But there are a couple of reasons for his slow start, namely the tough schedule and the re-tooled offensive line. Let’s take a look at his schedule first.

Below are the Jets’ opponents through the first 4 weeks along with their rank against the run and rank in fantasy points allowed to RBs:

By no means has it been an insanely brutal schedule for Thomas Jones, but he hasn’t faced any cupcakes. Miami and Arizona have been surprisingly tough on opposing RBs so far, and we know New England and San Diego are better than those rankings

Now let’s take a look at Jones’ upcoming games after the week 5 bye:

It gets a bit tougher again after that with games against New England and Tennessee, but Jones also faces Denver and the 49ers later in the year. Those next 5 games alone should convince you to trade for Jones or hang on to him.

But wait… there’s more!

Keep in mind that New York’s offensive line has 2 new starters—free-agent pickups LG Alan Faneca and RT Damien Woody. These are 2 big, beefy studs that have already made this line much better. But it’s going to take another couple of games before this unit really gels.

Let’s look at some split stats from Marshawn Lynch last year, a RB that was running behind another offensive line with 2 new players at the same 2 positions no less (LG Derrick Dockery and RT Langston Walker). Here are Lynch’s yards per carry by month last year:

Of course this improvement is due, in part, to Lynch progression as a RB at the pro level, but part of it can also be attributed to the offensive line coming together. I can see the same thing happening with Thomas Jones this year. He’s averaging just 3.8 yards per carry right now, but I bet that number spikes to well above 4 yards per carry in the 2^nd half of the season when his offensive line really comes together.

Judging by some of the comments I’ve heard from Jones-owners around these parts, the man can be had for Curtis Martin and a bag of balls right now. So have some guts and take a chance on a guy who could still be a top-15 RB from here on out. And if Jones is already on your roster, have some patience… he’s going to come around.

And if he doesn’t, you can always blame Draft Sharks for all of your problems.

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This entry was posted on Tuesday, September 30th, 2008 at 11:12 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

One Response to “Buy Low: The Case for Thomas Jones”

1. Tom Waller says:

   October 1, 2008 at 1:34 pm

   Hope you’re right. I’ve got Thomas JOnes on 3 teams, but he’s been disappointing.

   While you pushed him, other people saw value too.