SEATTLE -- Sitting quietly at his locker late Saturday evening, Detroit Lions wide receiver Marvin Jones sighed a little bit. He fiddled with the zipper on his gray hoodie. He wanted to make sure he said this right.

The emotions were raw. The frustration was obvious. He may have had one of the best statistical seasons of his career, but to him, it didn’t feel like it.

“Uh, I don’t know. It wasn’t, in terms of my standards, it wasn’t good at all,” Jones told ESPN.com. “You know, I don’t know.”

It was an odd dichotomy for Jones in 2016. The 26-year-old had some of the best statistics of his career. He had a career-best 930 receiving yards, and his 55 catches were the second-best totals of his career. He scored four touchdowns for the second straight season.

And yet, it still bothered him, mostly because of how it played out.

After the third week of the season, Jones led the NFL in receiving yards. He had a 100-yard game and a 200-yard game. He wouldn’t hit either of those markers again on the year and ended up falling all the way to 30th in the league in receiving yards.

Some of that, he said, was due to extra attention he received after he started breaking out as quarterback Matthew Stafford's favorite target. He had not been a No. 1 receiver in the NFL before -- in Cincinnati, he was No. 2 to A.J. Green -- and that took some adjusting to.

But in the middle of the season, he asked himself, “What’s happening?” He couldn’t figure it out himself. After three or four games of less-than-impressive production, teams stopped double-teaming him. Coverage was going back to normal.

His play, however, wasn’t.

He had seven drops this season, more than his other three seasons in the NFL combined. As the season wore on, he struggled more and more to get off the line of scrimmage against press-man coverage. More than half of his 930 receiving yards came in the first four weeks of the season.

“When you look at how I started, you didn’t think it would end this way,” Jones said. “Obviously I had some uncharacteristic drops here and there, especially early on. I just never had a season like this. I really don’t know what to say.”

He said “it shouldn’t matter” about double coverage, though, because he believes he’s a player who should be able to handle it. He said, “It hurts, man. It really hurts” when he thought about how his production slid as the season wore on.

Jones said he “fell short” this season. Short of the expectations he had for himself. Short of what his new team, the Lions, needed him to be. So while his statistics would show a receiver who had a pretty good season, he doesn’t believe that.

He admitted he might change his mind eventually about how his season went, but not now and not in the immediate future. Not with the goals he had. Not with the ones he still has in the future. So he doesn’t find it weird that he’s disappointed with his season, even though it was one of his best.

“It’s not weird to me because I just know what type of player that I am, and I want to be the best, wanted to be one of the best, and it started to look that way and things, whatever happened, things turned,” Jones said. “It wasn’t good in my standards, but as a team what we did and all the players that we had and what we were able to accomplish is not to be forgotten.

“We had some great times coming back in the fourth quarter, everybody making the necessary plays that we had to get the wins to get to this point, but I don’t know what to say about myself. I have to do better.”

Jones hinted he is going to change some things about what he does in the offseason, although he did not elaborate Saturday night. He did say, though, that the way he felt about his season was possibly going to send him running hills tomorrow if he could.

But this year just left him somewhat speechless -- but not in a way he expected.

“As long as I’ve played football, I’ve always been that guy to make every single play for my team, to make a huge impact on every single game,” Jones said. “I don’t know, maybe I’m numb right now to what I’ve done. I want to be, I am that guy that makes all the necessary plays for the team and I fell short. Fell short.

“It’s a new feeling. Obviously, it’s not a great feeling. I never want to feel this way again. Next year is going to be a hell of a year. I promise you.”