New Orleans Saints

Julio Jones: The 300 Game

Published Jun. 30, 2017 6:28 p.m. ET

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The smart people in 2011 said the bounty Atlanta GM Thomas Dimitroff paid to move up 21 spots in the draft to pick Julio Jones was excessive. Two ones, a two, and two fours is quite a bounty to move from 27 to six. “Probably one of the greatest trades in draft history,” Cleveland coach Pat Shurmur said then.

Five years is probably adequate time to judge a trade, so let’s see.

For the Falcons, Jones caught 12 passes for 300 yards Sunday in a 48-33 victory over Carolina. It’s the sixth time in NFL history that a player has amassed 300 receiving yards in a game. Jones led the NFL in receiving yards last year. He leads the NFL in receiving yards this year. He’s 27.

For the Browns, the five players acquired in the trade — Phil Taylor, Greg Little, Owen Marecic, Trent Richardson and Brandon Weeden — are no longer on the team.

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Phil Taylor, Greg Little, Owen Marecic, Trent Richardson and Brandon Weeden did not play Sunday in the NFL. In fact, none of them dressed. Weeden’s a third-string quarterback in Houston. Taylor’s on IR in Denver. The other three are out of football.

Atlanta’s 3-1 this morning. Cleveland, 0-4, is the only winless team in the NFL.

Shurmur turned out to be half-right. It was one of the greatest trades in draft history — for Atlanta.

* * *

What an eventful NFL Sunday. Rex Ryan did his latest haunt job on the Patriots. Case Keenum won to raise his record to 3-1; Cam Newton lost, and he’s 1-3. Raiders won on the road again, and they’re 3-1. Cardinals lost at home again, and they’re 1-3. Denver, playing Trevor Siemian and Paxton Lynch at quarterback, buried the Bucs in Tampa and sit atop the league, the NFL’s lone 4-0 team.

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But whoa, Atlanta’s a steamroller right now, with 35, 45 and 48 points in its past three games. Matt Ryan to Jones is the envy of the league. Ryan threw for 503 yards and Jones caught 300, the first time ever a quarterback’s thrown for 500 and receiver caught for 300. In his best play Sunday, Jones ran a short crossing route against Carolina cornerback Bene Benwikere, caught a short toss from Ryan, ran away from Benwikere, and turned upfield, beating the safety and leaving others in his wake. He just outran them all, for 75 yards and a shockingly easy touchdown. Jones is so tall, and you don’t think a 6-3 guy would have his acceleration. But he runs away from fast corners.

That may not be the best thing to like about him. He’s the anti-Dez. I forget who told me this in my trip to Falcons’ training camp in August, but someone with the team said the thing he liked most about Jones is you walk into the practice facility on Monday, and you have no idea if he caught two passes Sunday or 12. Just a total flat-liner, the way GM Thomas Dimitroff remembers from his scouting research on him. “I saw him live twice at Alabama and obviously did a lot of work on him,” Dimitroff said Sunday night. “What really interested me was what he was — driven — and what he wasn’t — a diva. I mean, I was numb at what we were going to have to pay to get him. But I always felt strong that a difference-maker like him, with an attitude like he had, would always be worth it.”

After games, the Falcons bring the head coach and quarterback to a press-conference room to accommodate the media.On Sunday, the Falcons’ director of football communications, Brian Cearns, approached Jones to say he should probably go to the podium instead of talking at his locker, because of the overflow he’d get with the big day. “Absolutely not,” Jones said. “I will do it at my locker. This was a team win. I don’t want to do anything different than normal.” Cearns said okay. “He’s the same guy if he catches one ball, like he did Monday night [in New Orleans] or he catches 12 for 300, like he did today,” Cearns said.

I spoke to Jones on the phone after the game. “You’re the sixth player ever to have 300 receiving yards in a game,” I said. “Has that hit you?”

“No, it hasn’t,” he said. “To me, they’re just numbers. Stats. I went out and did what my team needed me to do today for us to win. Just like Matt did, just like the line did all day. I’m no different.”

The Panthers, Jones said, singled him more than he thought they would, “and we kind of exploited that. When you’re playing a team in your division that you see all the time, you know each other so well and you really don’t know which way they’re going to play you. But me and Matt have great chemistry. So a day like this can happen.”

Jones barely sounded happy. “I am,” he said. “I’m very pleased. All I can do is go out and play 100 percent and let my production speak. But in this game, you rely so much on everyone else. We had a good team game today.”

I really like players who have Jones’ attitude. They do everything they can, and what happens happens, and then they come back the next game and repeat it. We want our players to have head in hands after a tough loss, to mourn. But we shouldn’t make players be something they’re not. Jones doesn’t take his game home. He’s no football junkie, flipping the TV from game to game on an off day. It’s his job, and he tries to be perfect, and then he goes home. In his second year, Jones had a tremendous game in the NFC Championship Game against San Francisco — 11 catches, 182 yards, two touchdowns. Lots of players in the Atlanta locker room were crestfallen after the 28-24 loss. Not Jones. “I gave everything I had out there,” he said. “I’m fine.”

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The next two weeks should be very interesting for Jones and the Falcons: next Sunday against Aqib Talib and the great Broncos defense, in Denver; and the following Sunday against Richard Sherman and the great Seattle secondary. That’s going to be some fun football.

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