GREEN BAY, Wis. -- No one knew what Aaron Jones would do when he got his first chance to carry the ball in an NFL game.
Except for Jones, that is.
And maybe Ben Sirmans, the Green Bay Packers' running backs coach.
For it was Sirmans who gave Jones the speech coaches offer to backups all around the league. It may be a line of coach-speak designed to keep them interested, but Jones took it as gospel.
“He was like, ‘Stay with it, and it will come. You don’t know when, you don’t know where, but if you stay with it, good things are going to happen,’” Jones said. “And I did, and good things are happening now.”
The 19th running back selected in April’s draft and third back to get the call for the Packers this season after Ty Montgomery and rookie Jamaal Williams suffered injuries, Jones looks like he’s done more than enough to keep the job as Green Bay returned from last week’s bye and heads into the second half of the season.
It wasn’t until Week 4 that Jones even touched the ball but since then, it’s been hard to get it out of his hands. In four games leading up to the bye, Jones has a pair of 100-plus yard performances. On 62 carries, he has rushed for 346 yards -- the sixth-best total in the league from Weeks 4-7. His yards-per-carry average of 5.58 during that stretch is higher than the five backs ahead of him. He’s also tied with Le’Veon Bell, Ezekiel Elliott, Leonard Fournette and Mark Ingram with the most rushing touchdowns (three) in that span.
Fournette, the fourth pick in the draft, was picked 178 spots higher than Jones, a fifth-round pick from UTEP.
“It makes you feel good, but I’ve always felt like I belonged with the top backs,” Jones said. “I feel like that’s just how I play. It doesn’t surprise me.”
The 5-foot-9, 208-pound Jones could end up being the best thing the Packers’ offense has going for it as long as Aaron Rodgers is on injured reserve with a broken collarbone.
While much of the offseason focus was on Montgomery’s full-time transition from receiver to running back, Jones ranked no better than third on the depth chart. He started the season behind Montgomery and Jamaal Williams, a fourth-round pick. Even seventh-round pick Devante Mays was active for the season opener against Seattle, while Jones watched in street clothes as a healthy scratch.
But it was Jones who has proven most effective. His quickness was evident from the start, and he made up for any early mistakes by simply playing as fast as he possibly could.
“He’s a very instinctive runner, very decisive, puts his foot in the ground, goes north and south, attacks the defense,” said Packers offensive coordinator Edgar Bennett, a former NFL running back. “And the other thing that stands out probably more than anything else, he always, for the most part, finishes moving forward. He has great pad level and body lean moving forward.”
As long as Jones had to wait, things changed perhaps faster than he could have imagined, which made last week’s bye the perfect time for him to let it all sink in.
“I’ve done a lot, but there’s more than I can continue to do,” Jones said when he returned from a trip home to El Paso, Texas. “I can continue to get better and grow, so that’s the exciting thing, and I’m just ready to play some more football.”