Yesterday Seattle Seahawks middle linebacker Ernest Jones IV turned 25 years old. That's always a big landmark in any NFL player's career, effectively serving as the cut-off point between them being a young athlete and being in their prime.
Whether it was meant as a birthday present or not, the Seahawks gave Jones a special honor heading into their Week 12 matchup tomorrow afternoon with the Arizona Cardinals. Jones has been named one of the team's captains this week, along with starting quarterback Geno Smith on offense and long snapper Chris Stoll on special teams.
While it's only been a few weeks since he came over in a trade from the Tennessee Titans, Jones has definitely earned the honor. In his Seattle debut against the Los Angeles Rams (who drafted him and traded him to Tennessee in September), the defensive unit performed far better than we had seen since the first three games of the season when they stomped the Broncos, Patriots and Dolphins to start the year 3-0.
The influence of Jones was easy to see - and the defense stepped it up again in last week's critical win over the San Francisco 49ers, their first in seven meetings with their most-bitter division rivals. For the first time since Christian McCaffrey arrived in Santa Clara, the Seahawks were able to contain him on the ground. They also played tight coverage on everybody but Jauan Jennigns and got just enough pressure on Brock Purdy to come away with an improbable upset win.
With the green dot on his helmet, Jones is already arguably the Seahawks' most-important defensive player. So, while being named a team captain is nice we'd prefer that Seattle would give him a much better belated birthday gift of a lucrative long-term contract offer. Every week that Jones plays like this his price is going to go up and allowing him to leave as a free agent next year would be an unthinkable blunder, especially given what they gave up to get him.
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