Is your assessment factual. Because I have to be honest...it sounds like you are making excuses for this guy. You are telling us that he is COACHED to overrun plays?
Cutting off the outside path is a fundamental football concept.
It is the basic assignment for LBs on most teams that they must cut off the outside path in situations like the play in question.
LVE was on that side of the field but was in front of Jaylon and didn't make the tackle.
It was easy for Jaylon to see LVE and know that LVE was not behind him to come up and help from that side.
If you watch many hours of coaches film, you would see their assignment on those types of plays is to cut off the outside path.
Obviously some smaller LBs could likely get to the outside and stop more quickly than Jaylon did which would give them a better shot to cut off the outside but still make the tackle. Jaylon is obviously playing at a relatively heavy weight for a 4-3 LB. He has to be at least 250 and likely more. There are some plays that Dexter Coakley could have made that Jaylon won't make but there are many things Jaylon can do what Coakley couldn't. All of the Belichick LBs look much more like Jaylon than Coakley and the Pats played a 4-3 last season.
They are using Jaylon much more as a pass rusher. On 3rd downs they often play a 3 man DL with Jaylon replacing one of the DTs. Lee or Thomas then replace Jaylon's normal role while Jaylon plays the hybrid LB/DL role. It's very similar to how the Patriots use their LBs; although, the Pats do it much more often and in more varied ways.
Football is always about trade-offs. The Cowboys decided to draft big LBs and not have them keep their weight at the lower end of their range. There are trade-offs for doing that.
Back to the specific play:
- Several things went wrong before Jaylon "over-ran" the play.
- The fact that he had to cover as much distance as he did was a big part of it.
- He had to run full speed just to get there.
- Ideally LBs shouldn't be having to run full speed to get to a RB at that location on the field (i.e. within 10 yards of the line and inside the yard-line numbers.