Brandon Jones floated to his right, then realized what was happening a quarter of a football field away.
San Francisco receiver Deebo Samuel took the ball from quarterback Brock Purdy but then flipped it to Jacob Cowing on a reverse. Nine Denver defenders were outside the hashes to Jones’ right, including him.
He put his foot in the ground, measured a lot of green space in front of him and bolted.
Jones didn’t break down and hardly slowed. He made one course adjustment and squared up Cowing at nearly full speed.
What looked like a big play turned into a 2-yard gain.
Jones got up, straightened his shoulder pads and headed back to the defensive backfield.
It was one of several open-field tackles the Broncos safety made against the 49ers and the latest in a string of high-quality, often underappreciated, outings from Jones, who is happy to be back on the field after missing the stretch run last year with a torn pectoral muscle.
“Itap been great,” Jones said this week of being back in action. “I didn’t miss how I feel after games just from a body standpoint, but I’m blessed to be back out there with the guys and to help any way I can.”
Jones is playing his seventh NFL season and already his third in Denver — he’s in the final of a three-year, $20 million deal that has turned into a substantial bargain for the Broncos — which makes him something of an elder statesman. He is the most veteran defensive back on Denver’s 53-man roster and is topped by one NFL season and a few months on the calendar by fellow 28-year-old Taylor Rapp, who was signed to the practice squad last month.
“Itap crazy to think,” Jones said. “I tell people all the time, I’m the oldest — well, with Rapp here now, but before that I was the oldest DB we had in the room, which is insane that I’m, like, the seasoned vet.
“It feels like I was the rookie, you know, yesterday. Itap a blessing. Especially going into Year 7. Already beat the average for people playing in this league and hopefully I got at least four or five more in me.”
Jones is a stabilizing force and, paired with Talanoa Hufanga, forms one of the more versatile and capable safety duos in football.
“It feels exactly the same,” Jones said of Year 2 next to Hufanga, who arrived last spring via free agency. “You’d have thought we’ve been playing together our whole entire careers. There’s a lot of unspoken in just the way we play off each other. Then the way we communicate and talk. Itap comforting, we have a lot of fun, obviously, and we just feed off each other.
Against the Niners alone, Jones made four impressive open-field tackles against a bevy of playmakers like Samuel, Christian McCaffrey, and Cowing. He’s second on the team with 31 tackles, trailing only Alex Singleton’s 47. Jones’ 21 solo tackles are nearly twice as many as anybody else on the defense aside from Singleton (22).
Overall, the Broncos have been a much better tackling outfit, though they say they still have room to improve since a dreadful season-opening performance in Kansas City last month.
“Itap been better,” Jones said. “From Week 1 to now we’ve done a really, really good job and made more of an emphasis of swarming to the ball, getting guys to the ball. Missed tackles happen. They happen. Itap impossible to go an entire game without missing a tackle, but we’ve made more of an emphasis of getting the guy down and, if you’re the second guy in, punching at the ball.
“Make that the main thing and itap been a lot better.”
That kind of performance — along with Jones making plays — represents a return to normalcy for fellow Broncos defenders.
“I would say he’s probably one of the best in the league at open-field tackling,” fellow safety Devon Key said. “He knows that. He takes the right angles. Knows how to get the person down.
“Any time the ball gets through or squirts through a gap, I’m always like, ‘we’re good. B-Jones will get it down somehow.’”
The job for Jones and Hufanga, along with nickel Ja’Quan McMillian, only gets more important this weekend against the Chargers. They’ll be the regulars on the field alongside Denver’s young corner pair, Jahdae Barron and Kris Abrams-Draine, who are set to start for the injured top-line duo of Pat Surtain II and Riley Moss.
Jones thinks they’ll handle the work just fine. He’s played with both over the past three seasons, just not both at the same time in full-time duty.
The young guys know, too, that if anything breaks out, Jones will most likely get it to the ground somehow.
