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Datone Jones was not an impact rookie. He did show flashes that give hope he will take the 2nd year leap that many players take. Would we have done better drafting one of the other 6 guys I remember being discussed in our forum that were available at our turn

T=total tackles / S=sacks / I=interceptions / FF=fumbles forced / FR=fumbles recovered

Datone Jones DL PACK – 10T / 3.5S

Sly Williams DL Broncos – 19T / 2S / 1FR
Jon Cyprien S Jaguars – 102 T / 1S / 1I / 2 FF
Alec Ogeltree LB Rams – 117T / 1.5S / 6FF / 1I
Kevin Minter LB Cardinals – only 4T in 13 games
Jamie Collins OLB Pats – 43T in 8 starts
Matt Elam S Ravens – 77T / 1I / converted from SS to FS

ILB Minter gets 1 more year to prove he isn’t a bust.
DL Williams produced similar to Jones. See what happens next year.
Collins started slow but ended strong – would he be better than Perry or Neal?
S was again a position of weakness – neither Cyp or Elam had more than 1 int but both produced. Would they have been better for the Pack?
Olgetree was a beast forcing 6 fumbles. Hmmm him or Jones?

Ogletree and Cyprien would have helped Pack more this year. Maybe also Elam.
Collins and Williams a push.
However IF Jones really improves over next 2 years he could still have been the best pick. I'm still ok with jones as our choice.

what do you think?

The right pick was pretty clearly Eddie Lacy.

Way too soon to judge.

I think Jones will still be a great player, you can't expect rookies to make a major difference of course sometimes they do and theta great. We'll see what we have with jones next year, hopefully he adds some more bulk.

Honestly didn't notice him much all season, even when he was moved to ROLB against the 9ers. Not sure if that is a good thing or a bad thing.

Jones was a bust if you're basing the pick on year one impressions. Not really arguable.

I know a lot of people here liked Cyprien. I liked Ogeltree. I think multiple people said that the 1st round was too early to draft a S or ILB.

That said, I was good with Jones, and think he'll improve.

I wanted Swearinger.

Curious to know - which rookies have we seen that didn't produce early on, but went on to do great things later? Rodgers, Nelson, and Finley are the only ones I can remember.

Collins was solid his first year, IIRC. He regressed after that, and finally got it together later.

Hayward, Daniels, Cobb, Bulaga, Neal, Starks, Raji, Matthews, Lang, Brad Jones, James Jones, Jennings, Hawk, and Collins all made impacts their rookie years. Most of them were able to continue their impact.

I would have preferred Ogletree, but nobody should be calling Jones a bust right now. You gotta give D-linemen time

midranger wrote:I know a lot of people here liked Cyprien. I liked Ogeltree. I think multiple people said that the 1st round was too early to draft a S or ILB.

That said, I was good with Jones, and think he'll improve.

I liked Ogletree a lot too. He's the type of talent I was willing to gamble on even with the attitude problems.

That said, I liked the Datone Jones pick and I still do. It's way, way too early to write him off. Mike Daniels, who was very good this year, is a perfect example of a guy who can go from nothing to something along the DL. You need to give guys, especially OL/DL, time to develop in the NFL. JJ Watt went from a solid DE in his rookie year to being a Reggie White level freak in his second year.

th87 wrote:Curious to know - which rookies have we seen that didn't produce early on, but went on to do great things later? Rodgers, Nelson, and Finley are the only ones I can remember.

I'd probably add Mike Daniels (as Newz pointed out), Masthay, Desmond Bishop, Johnny Jolly, Andrew Quarless, Mike Neal, and Matt Flynn (kind of, if you think back to the days of him and Brohm battling it out - ugly).

But yeah it seems like we've had more boom/bust type guys in their first year.

Way too soon... But I think Jones will pan out tbh. He played pretty good on Sunday IMO

Should not stop us from picking other DL or DE thats for sure.

Way too early to say whether or not he was the "right pick". However, I was very high on Cyprien before the draft and he was the guy I wanted us to take before reading up more on Datone. Based on how our safeties looked this year.........it probably would have been a good pick.

Players we should have taken (and most believed so even at the time):

Zach Ertz, Ogletree, Elam, Cyprien, Mathieu, Wreh-Wilson, Keenan Allen, Cordarrelle Patterson, Arthur Brown, Swearinger

Everyone I was watching the draft with laughed at me because I said we should take Lacy in the first and ended up with him in the second. It may have been better to get Lacy in the first, Jones would have been gone, and maybe we take Mathieu, Allen, or Armstead in the second.

You can say it's too early to tell, I will say we have drafted three first round busts in a row. If you are going to live by the draft as much as Ted does he needs to make these first round picks count.

How can you possibly call any football player drafted in the first round a bust after one year? Especially when Jones wasn't all that bad this year to begin with.

Can't call any player a bust after 1 season. For me Jones has showed nothing so far in his first year. I have 0 expectations for him going forward but he can still bust out in his second or third season.

I would of moved up to take Eric Reid or drafted Eddie lacy with our 1st round pick so can't complain since we lucked out and still got Lacy.

Wont label him a bust, but he's not going to be a difference maker.

The guy put up 3.5 sacks as a rookie. In comparison Mike Daniels, who is a very good player for us now, put up 2.0 in his rookie season. BJ Raji, who at one point was very good for us, only put up 1.0 in his first season.

I'm not saying he's going to turn into Reggie White or something, but you need to give these guys (especially offensive and defensive lineman) more than one year to prove their worth.