If Josh Jones Can't Contribute Now, Will He Ever?

Josh Jones flexed his prodigious physical gifts in a win over the Bengals last season, but he’s been largely a non-factor other than that.

Draft position isn’t everything, but it does carry some meaning. Second round picks should be contributors, if not eventual starters. Players picked in the second round may not be the absolute cream of the crop, but teams can reasonably expect a certain level of return on their significant investments.

That’s why it’s so shocking to see second-year safety Josh Jones with just four defensive snaps to his name so far this year. From a pure playing time perspective, Jones is having the worst second season of any Packers second-round pick since Brian Brohm.

By his second year, Brohm was already taking snaps for the Buffalo Bills. Other than that, every other Packers second-rounder had played more than Jones. Even Jerel Worthy managed a dozen snaps as a second-year pro before he was released.

Jones himself knows this isn’t ideal. "You ain’t going to take a player in the second round to not contribute to the team,” said Jones on Clubhouse Live earlier this season.

But even ignoring the obvious football-related question —why Jones isn’t playing— there’s a bigger issue here: when will Jones play?

As it’s currently constituted, the Packers’ roster is almost ideally constructed to give Jones every opportunity to get on the field. The Packers ended last season with only two established safeties on the roster and one of them (Morgan Burnett) left in the offseason. The team took no great pains to add any other safeties; undrafted rookie Raven Greene is the only newcomer in the bunch.

Unless there’s some kind of unknown injury, an athlete like Jones should be able to do something on defense, but he’s been exclusively a special teams player despite being healthy for more than a month and the Packers’ defense giving up deep balls on a weekly basis.

If Jones can’t get snaps now, will he ever? And if he doesn’t, when will his time in Green Bay come to an end?