Godspeed, John Jones
John Jones
Reserve linebacker John Jones will apparently transfer from Florida to seek more playing time. Jones saw action in 11 games in 2008, mostly on special teams. He recorded 18 tackles.
Jones was a part of the vaunted 2007 recruiting class and had fairly solid rankings from both of the major services: A three-star, #30 OLB from Rivals and a four-star #8 MLB from Scout. He had offers from LSU, Alabama, South Carolina and Notre Dame, among others. At Florida, however, he ran into logjams at all three linebacker positions and was likely to be listed behind the following players on the depth chart heading into fall camp: Brandon Spikes, Ryan Stamper, Brandon Hicks, Dustin Doe, A.J. Jones, Lorenzo Edwards, Jon Bostic and perhaps even Jelani Jenkins eventually.
Based on the firepower on that list, this is a move that makes sense for Jones. Under NCAA rules, he could transfer to a Division I-A school, sit out one season and have two years of eligibility remaining. He could play immediately if he went to a school in a lesser division, but he wouldn’t gain any additional years of eligibility. If it were me, I’d sit out a year for the chance to stay in the bigtime. Based on the few chances I did get to see him play, I’m guessing he could (at minimum) be a starter for a decent ACC school, for instance. Yes, yes. Save your jokes about the “ACC” and “bigtime.”
As for the Gators, this move does little more than ding the ‘ole APR score a few points. Jones wasn’t likely to be much more than a special teams player in 2009, and he’d have to fight with a number of highly touted youngsters for playing time in 2010, which would have been his senior season at UF. As such, there’s little more to do here than send Jones on his way with our best wishes. Godspeed, good sir.
This entry was posted on Monday, June 1st, 2009 at 7:29 am and is filed under Know Your Personnel. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.