What You Need to Know:

• Jones ranked 15th among WRs in PPR points in 8 games with Matt Stafford last year.
• He missed the final 3 games with an ankle injury but should be fully recovered for 2020.
• Jones returns to the same offense with similar target competition.
• He’s seen only 4 fewer targets than Kenny Golladay in 17 games with Stafford over the past 2 seasons

2019 in review

Only 14 WRs scored more PPR points than Jones over the first 9 weeks of the 2019 season.

That’s when he was catching passes from Matt Stafford. During that stretch, Jones tallied 42 grabs, 535 yards and 6 TDs — all top 19 marks among WRs. He was efficient, posting a sparkling 73.7% catch rate and 12.7 yards per catch. Jones ranked 37th in yards per route run among 74 WRs with 30+ targets through Week 9.

A big chunk of that production came in his 4-TD explosion against the Vikings in Week 7. But Jones had 2 more top-11 PPR finishes with Stafford: a 6-101-1 line in Week 3 and an 8-126-1 in Week 9. He also ranked 33rd at his position in Week 4. Jones was outside the top 50 WRs in his other 4 games with Stafford. So he was definitely boom/bust, but the booms were big.

Jones fell to WR37 in PPR points without Stafford over the next 5 weeks. Then he missed the final 3 games of the season with an ankle injury.

2020 outlook

But both he and Stafford are expected to be back to 100% for the start of the 2020 campaign. The Lions didn’t add any significant target competition this offseason. And OC Darrell Bevell returns to provide scheme continuity.

In short, Jones will be in a very similar situation as he was for the first 9 weeks of last year … when he scored as WR15 in PPR points. Now, he’ll have trouble repeating that 73.7% catch rate. And we can’t expect him to score on 14.3% of his receptions again. But Jones has been efficient throughout his 4 seasons in Detroit. Across the first 3, he averaged 9.3 yards per targ…