Aaron Jones Offers a Reminder to Mike Florio
Apparently, Aaron Jones checks in on Pro Football Talk.
A clip circulated on social media earlier in the week of Mike Florio — the proprietor over on PFT — discussing the Nick Mullens-to-Jones pass when Sam Darnold needed to briefly come off the field. Shortly thereafter, Florio reveals that Jones commented on the analyst rolling with the Chicago Bears instead of the Minnesota Vikings.
Aaron Jones, Mike Florio, & The Week 12 Win
Mullens did a tremendous job.
The QB2 came off the bench and faced a long third down. A lot of coaches would simply call something conservative while the team looks to get its feet underneath itself with a new passer. Instead, Kevin O’Connell called a play that involved Jones seeing no shortage of green grass before picking up the first down. Credit to the QB, RB, and HC for making it work. Oh, and all of those WRs/TEs for the great blocking.
Check out the clip where Florio discusses the play, a new one that got installed leading up to the game, as Florio describes:
At the end of the clip, Florio offers the tidbit about Jones sending along the response to the PFT writer. Per Florio, Jones had this to say: “‘We do see stuff, we do read stuff, and we saw you didn’t pick us.'” If that helped to provide a bit of extra fuel on the fire, then Florio’s doubt was helpful. After all, the game was super close, finishing with a score of 30-27 in overtime.
Another fascinating tidbit to emerge about that play arrived in O’Connell’s Monday press conference. Consider how the QB-turned-HC thinks about how that play functions. After saying that the ball would have gone to Justin Jefferson had #18 been open, O’Connell went on to describe the Mullens pass to Jones as being akin to “a pretty simple, kind of long hand-off type throw.”
In other words, the pass was kind of like a running play. Go ahead and re-watch the clip above to get a better sense of what O’Connell is talking about. Jones gets the catch and then he has Trent Sherfield Jr., Jordan Addison, and T.J. Hockenson all in great spots while putting in great effort as blockers.
So, a pass that’s thought of as being like a running play. Classic O’Connell, right?
Jones, who turns 30 on December 2nd, is going into Week 13 with 179 carries, 798 yards, and 3 touchdowns. Plus, he has picked up 32 receptions for 285 yards and another score.
The veteran runner is averaging 4.5 yards per carry and evidently uses the outside noise to give himself a bit of extra motivation on Sunday.
Editor’s Note: Information from Pro Football Reference helped with this piece.
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K. Joudry is the Senior Editor for Vikings Territory and PurplePTSD. He has been covering the Vikings full time since the summer of 2021. He can be found on Twitter, as a co-host for Notes from the North, and as the proprietor at The Vikings Gazette, a humble Vikings Substack.