Buccaneers: Time to prove why Ronald Jones was worth keeping

To the surprise of some, the Tampa Bay Buccaneers decided to hold onto Ronald Jones II at the trade deadline. Now, it’s time for the Buccaneers and Jones to show why.

RoJo has become some thing of a lightning rod amongst the Buccaneers faithful as of late. With the emergence of Leonard Fournette, and the overall state of the running game at the time when trade talks were heating up at the deadline, he was at the top of many peoples lists to ship out of Tampa Bay.

The general rationale for this thinking, was that he was seldom used, and would have the most value on the market in terms of returning draft capital. The fact that running backs are the most expendable position in possibly all of sports, also played a part of that. The Bucs decided to stay put with RoJo, and as of now given the circumstances, it appears that was the right call.

Just as Fournette was morphing into “Late Season Lenny” right on cue, he was unfortunately injured, amongst the many, during the Buccaneers loss to the New Orleans Saints that frankly does not need to be talked about anymore than that. As a result, Fournette is likely headed to the injured reserve, so the next time we see him, he will have to already be evolved into “Playoff Lenny”.

The thing is, while it is true that running backs are the most replaceable, you also can’t win with a true bellcow back in today’s NFL. It takes a village, or in this case, a committee. You really aren’t going to find a much better RB2 than Jones, so it makes sense why the team decided to stick with him. You don’t need one main man, but you do need a few that are at the very least capable of carrying a larger load load when called upon, such as this exact scenario.

With Giovani Bernard still trying to get healthy, and the Buccaneers bringing in Le’Veon Bell to presumably replace Ke’Shawn Vaughn, that leaves Mojo RoJo as the Bürgermeister of the backfield. That being the case, it’s time for him to show the talent that we all know he possesses. He might not be Lenny, but the thing is the Buccaneers don’t need him to be. They just need him to be in capable running back to allow Brady to execute some play action passes, now that his receiving corps are starting to get depleted. That is something he should be more than capable of doing. The man was a near 1,000 yard rusher a season ago.

It’s clear that the Bucs are high on Ronald Jones, and that’s why they kept him around. Now, both are in a position to reap the benefits of this faith, and show everyone why the team was right to keep a member of the Tampa Bay Buccaneers.