Tampa Bay Buccaneers: What to expect from Ronald Jones in 2019

After a lackluster rookie season, Ronald Jones II will try to flip the narrative on his Tampa Bay Buccaneer career in his sophomore season in 2019.

While the idea of a sophomore slump is common in the NFL, Ronald Jones II is going to have to hope that his only slump occurred in his rookie season, and will not continue on into his second year. For a player that was expected to start by this point, questions have started to be raised about Jones’ abilities with Peyton Barber still in control of the starting spot as of now.

The usual expectation with a second round pick in the NFL is that they have the capacity to start early on in their career, sometimes even in their first season similar to a first round selection. Unfortunately for Jones, a mixture of injuries and disappointments on the field itself made his production more comparable to a player taken in a much later round, if drafted at all. Less than two yards per carry, dropped passes, and only a single touchdown on the season is not at all what was expected of Jones.

While not as efficient as he was hoped to be, injuries and the emergence of current starter Peyton Barber did likely play a role in the number of touches that Jones received and thus led to his less than stellar stat line. Jones was a lights out player at USC and the hope is that he can return the Bucs running game to the success that it experienced during the last time that Doug Martin had an exceptional season (2015).

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One of the leading stories coming out of training camp and this offseason has been Jones’ improvement both as a ball carrier and as a receiver. While no games have been played to put this to the test yet, the hope is that Jones can start to take a higher workload this coming season and be more efficient with his touches wherever they come from.

For Jones to maintain his spot on the team after this year there will have to be a turnaround in his play. From what Bruce Arians and company have said about the sophomore back in the past few weeks, Jones will hopefully live up to the words of his coaches and produce around 300-400 all-purpose yards as a backup.

As of now Peyton Barber is still the lead back, albeit on a pass first offense. This guess allows for the potential of a decent amount of production that certainly far exceeds that of last year.

Jones will likely have to hit this range or at least improve his efficiency at the very minimum if he hopes to remain in contention for playing time and a spot on the team in the future. This is good for Jones because Bruce Arians will likely improve the already successful offense and can hopefully implement a run game that plays off of Jones’ and Barber’s strengths. If Ronald Jones can play up to his draft potential this upcoming season he could get a shot at being the Buccaneer’s featured back in the future.