The Chicago Bears spent their first pick on day three of the 2022 NFL draft on Braxton Jones. Jones is a tackle prospect from Southern Utah who was under-recruited from high school but managed to make his way into the NFL.
What are some of the important factors that went into the Chicago Bears drafting Braxton Jones?
3. Braxton Jones Snaps and alignment
Braxton Jones has a basketball background and was relatively new to football because of it. That is what caused him to slip into the college recruit rankings, and saw him going to Southern Utah.
Still, he was able to get experience at Southern Utah. He played two games as a redshirt freshman, but then finished his career with 29 starts, He started 28 games at left tackle, and once at right tackle, although that was back in his redshirt freshman season.
In that span, Braxton Jones took 921 pass protection reps compared to 588 run-blocking snaps. According to PFF, Southern Utah ran a lot of RPOs, so only 50% of his pass protection snaps were true pass protection reps. The rest were snaps where he was showing run, or where there was a screen.
That is another thing that likely made him tougher for scouts to evaluate, pushing him to this range.
PFF also noted that he was a zone blocker on 60% of his run blocking snaps, and those primarily came as an outside zone blocker, although he does have experience running inside zone.
The zone blocking aspect surely adds to why the Chicago Bears were interested in him as this is where they look to transition the offense to.
2. Braxton Jones Stats
If you are going to be a draft pick from a small school such as Southern Utah, you had better dominate. During the last three seasons, Braxton Jones was named to the third team All-Big Sky once, and the first-team All-Big Sky twice. The last two seasons also featured him being named as a first-team All-FCS player. Souther Utah was 6-34 during his tenure, but that had little to do with him, and really shows how much more upside he could have with rea talent around him
During his three-year career Braxton Jones allowed just three sacks and three quarterback hits. He also allowed just 13 hurries. It is worth noting that a majority of those came in 2021, but at the same time his 2020 season was just six games because of the pandemic.
According to PFF, he is a much more prominent run blocker than pass protector. They also like him more as a power blocker, although that is likely because it was a much smaller sample. Either way, all signs point to him sticking at left tackle moving forward.
Jones has a floor as a run blocker, and while he is raw in pass protection, a lot of it can do with his environment, and the upside is there to find more.
1. Braxton Jones Athletic Upside
A lot of the upside that Braxton Jones is presenting comes from his athleticism. Below you can see how Braxton Jones compares to your typical offensive tackle thanks to RAS scores. Jones had an overall score of 8.44 out of 10.
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The first thing to look at is the arm length. Your normal tackle will be around 33.75, Jones is at 35.37. When you want to bet on traits and upside, you want to bet on a tackle with length. You cannot make a tackle longer, but you can teach the long tackle to use him arms to his advantage.
Beyond that, you can see a great speed, which includes a better 10-yard split than 40. That is what you need to see from a lineman and it shows that he can shoot out of his stance.
His burst and agility scores are conflicting, which does not happen often. He is near elite in the broad and 3-cone but is struggling in the vertical and shuttle.
This could suggest that he is light on his feet, and does have an explosion, however, there is little power that creates the extra push. He is noted from his basketball background to be quick, but lacking power in some areas, and that may come from his lower body being lighter and not as strong.