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One of the more shocking moments of NFL free agency happened on Sunday, before free agency had even began. Aaron Jones is returning to the Green Bay Packers.
After the team chose not to use the franchise tag on Jones, it seemed like a foregone conclusion he'd be going somewhere else this season. But nope, he'll stay with the Packers on a four-year, $48 million contract. Should an NFL team have invested heavily in a running back? That's a discussion for another day.
Today, we're just concerned with these questions: what should we expect from Aaron Jones in 2021, and how does this signing impact the fantasy football potential of other pieces on this Packers team?
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What's Aaron Jones' Ceiling In Green Bay?
Let's start with why the Packers have brought back Aaron Jones.
Even in an NFL landscape where teams are increasingly deciding that running backs are less important than the other offensive skill positions and that plenty of backs can be productive when put in a good situation, Aaron Jones stands out.
Why?
Efficiency.
I decided to head over to Stathead and try to see just how much Jones stands out.
First, there have been just 23 seasons where a player had 200 carries and averaged at least 5.45 yards per carry, but 14 of those came before the year 2000, and then a good number of the rest were in the 2000s. Since 2010, there have been four such seasons:
So, there's the first notable thing about Jones: his ability to run the ball this much and sustain his efficiency is impressive. If you remember, his first two NFL seasons also saw him run the ball with this same level of efficiency, but with far fewer touches, prompting worries he couldn't sustain that in a larger role. 2019 saw him drop down to 4.6 yards per carry. That still ranked 14th among qualifying backs, so even Jones' least-efficient season saw him average more yards per carry that season than Saquon Barkley, Ezekiel Elliott, and Dalvin Cook.
Furthermore, Jones has a career YPC of 5.2 on 651 carries. 19 players have 650 or more carries with over five yards per carry, but the majority of those are quarterbacks. In terms of running backs, only Marion Motley, Jamaal Charles, Nick Chubb, Jim Brown, and Dan Towler have a higher YPC average while running the ball at least as any times as Jones. And Motley and Towler should barely count -- they were fullbacks in the 40s and 50s.
So, yeah, Jones is uber-efficient. That's aided by him playing with an elite quarterback, which helps open up space for him, but let's not give Aaron Rodgers all the credit. Jones still had 4.5 yards per carry against stacked boxes last year, so even though he faced an average of just 6.8 defenders in the box, he still showed he could move the football when the defense did key in on him. He was also ninth in yards created.
Jones is set to be a solid fantasy RB1 option this year. We can argue some specifics, like how high his ceiling is if he's only 12th among backs in receptions again, but Jones was fourth in fantasy points per game last year. He should be considered as an option to be the fifth running back taken in re-draft after Christian McCaffrey, Derrick Henry, Alvin Kamara, and Dalvin Cook.
Is The A.J. Dillon Hype Train Over?
Yes. Put the A.J. Dillon hype away.
Dillon was being drafted as the RB26 right now per NFC's ADP data. That, of course, was happening because of the assumption that Dillon was probably the starter in Green Bay this year, but was leaving some room for that to not be the case.
Well, now we need to leave all the room for that to not be the case. With Jones' workload, there's just no way I'd be drafting Dillon as an RB3. I'd feel much more comfortable drafting him in the low-end RB4 range like other backups whose value is stifled by playing behind a top runner, like Alexander Mattison (currently RB43) or where Jamaal Williams was being drafted (RB47).
This is where I want to go on a quick tangent: drafting A.J. Dillon in the second round was probably a bad move, but I don't think re-signing Jones makes it any worse than it already was. Don't draft a running back high when you already have one and when you need weapons on the outside. That was true in 2020, and it's still true after re-signing Jones. Likewise, Dillon hasn't shown enough for you to say "ok, we think Aaron Jones is one of the few game-changers at running back, but we have to let him walk because we have A.J. Dillon.) It's a messy situation that the Packers could have avoided by taking someone in the Joshua Kelley/La'Mical Perine/DeeJay Dallas tier a couple of rounds later. You still get some running back depth, but you don't use a second-round pick on one in the same draft where you used your first-round pick on a quarterback.
Anyway, Dillon has a 97th percentile speed score and burst score. In theory, he can be a great backup for Aaron Jones and a starter on another team. But the reality here is that he had 46 carries as a rookie and the Packers are going to lean heavily on Aaron Jones this year. Dillon can be an RB2 with upside if Jones misses time, but all the hype he's been getting and all the trades that have been happening in dynasty leagues involving him are now feeling like mistakes.
How Else Does This Impact The Packers and League?
For the Packers, not a lot changes, aside from the assumption that more money for Jones could mean less money to bring in a free agent receiver. But maybe they'll just use a draft pick on a young receiver and go into next season with Davante Adams, Allen Lazard, and someone from this extremely good draft class.
Aside from that, yeah...I don't have a lot of team-wide takeaways here. The Packers will look very much like the 2020 Packers on offense still. Consistency is nice, so maybe not having a lot of turnover will help Aaron Rodgers out, but also he was a top-five fantasy QB last year, so how much higher could he go? If anything, another year of wear and tear could lead to the Packers emphasizing the run more, which would help Jones and hurt Rodgers.
Elsewhere, this alters the running back market significantly. Jones was the best running back on the market. Teams like the Jets or Jaguars who had huge holes at running back no longer can bring Jones in to fill those holes, while no contenders can step in and offer Jones a chance to be their missing piece.
Chris Carson is now likely the best back out there. Carson's good, but he's not a can't-miss signing like Jones would have been. Teams like would have been fighting it out for Jones' services now might be more tempted to use an early pick -- late first or early second -- on a back as well.
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