Jaylon Smith LB Dallas Cowboys

meh...the jets aren't going to make the playoffs this year anyway....let the young guys play on the defensive side.

 

No thanks. Jaylon Smith had a great first couple years after a nice recovery story when he looked injury-fucked at Notre Dame, but he's been trash the past couple years. He runs around like a mad man but he doesn't settle his feet so he misses a lot of tackles and runs right by ball carriers.

Nice guy, very smart off the field with investing and setting up his life after football if you follow some of what he does. But not a good fit for the Jets. Overpaid as well.

He's also expendable but the Cowboys probably aren't rushing to dump him as they just declined Leighton Vander Esch's fifth year option I believe?

Easy guy to root for though, for sure. I hope he rebounds.

 

Am I confusing Smith with another great LB named Smith who was injured coming out of college and dind't play his rookie season? The Smith I remember was fast and made a ton of plays behind the LOS. Is it the same Smith and he never was the same player following the injury? What's going on? If it is the same player, and he isn't fast, then I don't think the Jets would want him (especially with his contract) because they want fast players.

 

It's the same player.

 

Thanks. I figued it must have been. Was he just overrated, or did the injury rob him of his speed? It also makes him sound like he possibly doesn't love the game and work hard to get better.

 

This dude is an absolute tackling machine.

Pro Bowl player.

And throughout his previous 3 years Jaylon Smith has played in all 48 of his games (with 0 games missed) and has been a freak ofnature.

• 417 combined tackles (140 tackles per season).

• 3,051 defensive snaps throughout his previous 3 seasons (95% of Dallas's Defensive Snaps) and is (literally) always on the field.

I'm sorry but it's impossible to record an insane 417 tackles throughout the previous 3 years without being a tackling machine (154 tackles last year).

And he doesn't miss tackles either.

2018 = 9.0% missed tackle percentage.
2019 = 7.8% missed tackle percentage.
2020 = 5.5% missed tackle percentage.

That's elite.

He's got better missed tackle percentages than Jamal Adams and even Fred Warner/Bobby Wagner/Lavonte David.

@NCJetsfan yes. This is the same Linebacker you're thinking of and since dating back to his Notre Dame injury he's been 100% healthy and he's a tackling machine.

 

So why would he be available? Can you take off the fan glasses and look at why the Cowboys would give up such a stud? Not being snarky, seriously wanting to know.

 

Sounds too rich for a player with "concerns"...

Smith played 1,030 snaps last season, nearly 98 percent of the Cowboys total in 2020. Like the rest of the defense, he struggled mightily, missing tackles and getting burned in coverage. It was those issues that led Dallas to add potential upgrades to the position this season.

Now the Cowboys have a potential $12.75 million backup.

If Dallas decided to cut him, the LB would count $9.8 million in dead money in 2021 and $6.8 million in 2022. On the flip side, Dallas would be on the hook for $9.2 million in injury guarantees next year if he plays this year and gets hurt.

Dallas could try to trade him to an LB-needy club, but his $7.2 million base salary guaranteed this season, and hefty salaries in future years, combined with questions about his play, would make that difficult. At the very least, the Cowboys would have to eat a chunk of his salary to move on.

 

What fan glasses? I'm not a Cowboys fan but I love Smith and he's recorded over 400 tackles over the previous 3 years (417) and is an absolute tackling machine (also a Pro Bowl player).

And plenty of great NFL players are either traded or become FA's. Curtis Martin and DeAndre Hopkkns and hundreds of others. Doesn't mean that they aren't excellent ball players.

NY Jets 2022 available salary cap space:
$+ 53,375,240 (4th).

Dallas 2022 available salary cap space: $- $26,234,409 (30th).

That's why man.

Dallas is in absolute salary cap hell and they can not afford him next year so therefore they'd rather not lose him for absolutely nothingness.

I'd love for coach Saleh to get his hands on Jaylon Smith @ ROLB while playing alongside of C.J. Mosley @ MLB with Hamsah Nasirildeen @ LOLB; because that's three tackling machines right there.

 

I saw every game he played in last year and it was obvious he was dogging it.

No thank you.

 

How can you dog it with 154 tackles with a missed tackle percentage of only 5%?

Those are elite numbers.

 

Tackles still count when they are 15 yards downfield after you've allowed your man to catch the ball. They count all over the field, actually.

Being there when the play ends to collect your .5 tackles factors into that number you posted, and linebackers rack up the numbers when teams don't have to bother passing that much against them.

The Cowboys had 510 rushing attempts against them and allowed over 2500 yards on the ground, both the most in the league by a decent margin. He was a stat compiler and not much else in 2020 and it was obvious to anyone who actually watched him play and didn't just look at YouTube highlight videos and PFF stat comparisons.

 

6/10 of the top leading tacklers last year have combined for one Pro Bowl. Our own Neville Hewitt is on the list. Tackles are an empty statistic to outline success as seen in the post above.

 

All I can think is for Zuniga or one of our young guys to take a quantum jump in improvement and surprise the shit out of all of us.

 

He obviously doesn't have the speed Saleh and Ulbrich want for our D, and according to what Acad23 posted, he does miss his fair share of tackles and isn't good in coverage. We don't need to burn draft capital and cap space for a player like that.

 

Zuniga needs to play consistently first

 

Spot on! Not too long ago, the Jets had a LB like that. He made a lot of tackles 10-15 yards downfield and looking only at his stats, you'd think he was a very good/great LB, but he wasn't.

 

I meant "fan" as in a fan of Shaq Lawson. I think the posts following this one I'm responding to cover a lot of the reasons JD won't want him.

 

His PFF stats sucked, actually.