He is fortunate to have his 2 interceptions. His first was on a Hail Mary pass at the end of the half which he should have batted the ball down. Picking the ball off didn’t even give the Cowboys a possession, it just ended the half.
His 2nd was a pick 6 he got because the ball was deflected at the line of scrimmage and went directly to him. Otherwise he would have been nowhere near the ball for the takeaway.
He hasn’t made an individual great play on a ball to get a takeaway in 5 years.
It's a shame because he's really strong in coverage.
I was browsing the "advanced" stats section of our main cornerbacks on Pro Football Reference's site. And the lack of interceptions is what holds him back from having much better results. Byron holds opposing QBs to a completion percentage in the low 50's, and he hasn't given up a ton of touchdowns, but the passer ratings against him in the last two years as a corner were 84.7 and 87.7, which isn't great but it's not bad. Just throwing in an INT or two would drop those passer ratings to the point where throwing against him is more of a losing proposition.
For what it's worth, Awuzie's 2019 passer rating allowed was in that same ballpark at 89, despite us all agreeing he's a drastically worse cover player. To be fair, he allowed a passer rating in the high 90's in 2018. So his floor is just terrible, while his ceiling is close to Byron's floor. So I'm not saying he's likely to be a similar player year-in, year-out. Just that he has the potential to be in the same ballpark.
Jourdan Lewis allows a 68% completion percentage. Which sounds terrible but it's mostly a product of playing the slot, because the advanced stats show that the average depth of his man was 6-8 yards downfield when they were targeted, as compared to Byron and Awuzie's men being 10-13 yards downfield on average. Not to mention their guys surely being further out by the sideline most of the time whereas Lewis's guy is in the middle of the field right in front of the QB more often, so his guys running shorter and easier to complete routes accounts for that.
Even with that, Lewis held opposing QBs to passer ratings of
85.6 and
86.8 in the last two years, so he was only
a hair worse than Byron in 2018 and actually
slightly better in 2019 when it comes to the ultimate result of passer rating. (And that's without factoring in that he scored defensive touchdows in both of those season, because passer rating doesn't take into account of the INT you throw is returned for a score that negates one of the TDs you throw to your own team.)
Oh, and Lewis was targeted 19 times in 2018 and 64 times in 2019. Byron was targeted 80 times in 2018 and 64 times in 2019. For the dummies saying Byron never gets interceptions because QBs never throw at him, re-read those target numbers and think about the fact that Lewis has 3 picks in the last 2 years while Byron hasn't managed even one during that time. They do throw at him. He's just that much worse at playing the ball.
Think about quarterback stats. A QB's passer rating looks completely different if he throws 0 interceptions in a game as opposed to if he throws a couple picks. That's the difference between a guy like Byron who basically NEVER even threatens to pick off a pass, and guys who stumble into one every now and then just by virtue of showing up and not being historically bad at that aspect of the game.
As a corner, if you can't play the ball or pick off a pass
ever, your entire game is resting on your completion percentage allowed and your ability to avoid giving up TDs to limit damage. When Byron had that lucky run in 2018 where he only allowed a TD every 40 targets, his passer rating allowed stayed lower. When he had worse luck and allowed a TD about every 20 targets in 2019, his passer rating rose to the level where a player like Awuzie was in the same ballpark and Jourdan Lewis was actually better.
I don't know how sustainable your game is as a corner when you can't do the thing that keeps opposing passers honest.
Is it a coincidence that Byron Jones had less success in 2019 after the league had a solid year of film of him playing corner full-time? Or is that a predictable, unavoidable trend?
His completion percentage allowed went up and his TD rate broke bad.
Of course, his defenders would say that the team's pass-rush was bad and that the LB play was worse and the defense was just all-around messy in 2019, so surely that bleeds over and sabotaged Byron. Right? Well, okay. But how to explain the three other main cornerbacks all improving from 2018 to 2019?
Awuzie and Lewis and Anthony Brown all made advances in 2019. They all got better, allowing lower passer ratings in 2019 than in 2018, while only Byron got worse (less a product of being sabotaged by the same defense the other guys all improved in, and more a result of his unsustainable TD rate coming back to earth).
