You look at what Mukuamu did in college and it was very similar to Byron Jones. That's not to say he has the same traits or plays like Byron Jones, just that while Mukuamu was primarily an outside corner, he spent a lot of time playing a variety of roles including slot, high safety, and safety in the box. Like Jones, Mukuamu was also deceptively productive in college and a three year starter (opting out as a senior) and actually lead the team in interceptions his final two years ahead of Jaycee Horn.
In terms of style, as I mentioned, he's nothing like Jones. Where Jones was the freak of all freak explosive athletes, Mukuamu is not. Mukuamu is big (212lbs), tall (6'4) and long (34" arms) but his college tape showed what he was, a raw player who converted from safety in high school to corner in college.... with false steps in his play evident despite getting the job done. Byron Jones' footwork on the other hand was really clean. So it was surprising to see Mukuamu arrive at training camp with nice, clean footwork, noticeably better than he showed on tape and something he obviously worked on in his season off.
And this pre-season we've seen Mukuamu play a variety of roles just as Byron Jones did as a rookie. In pre-season Mukuamu played:
- Slot - 60 snaps
- Box safety - 41 snaps
- Free safety - 30 snaps
- LOS - 22 snaps
He actually did it at a pretty high level although a lot of his playing time came against scrubs. Just to be clear, I don't expect Mukuamu to play nearly as often as Byron Jones did but in Jones' rookie season we had Wilcox, Church and Jones play 800+ defensive snaps with Heath also playing 200+ defensive snaps. It's therefore not unrealistic to think our safeties might play a bigger overall role than most predict, and Mukuamu could progress through the season to being a semi-regular part of that and could already be a niche slot man coverage guy against big WR's and TE's and a player who comes in on passing downs in the RedZone.
