10 biggest NFL draft busts in UCLA football history

The Green Bay Packers had just won a Super Bowl with Aaron Rodgers at quarterback a few years prior, so the offense was not a question mark. Instead, Green Bay needed to add on the defensive side of the ball, so they grabbed Jones, who was coming off a year with 5.5 sacks and 19.0 tackles for loss at UCLA. 

Jones didn’t play much over 16 games as a rookie, but he did manage 3.5 sacks and 10 total tackles. In 2014, instead of taking a big step forward, Jones simply improved to 20 total tackles and only recorded 1.5 sacks. After Year 2, it was clear that Jones was never going to develop into a star and deliver on his first-round potential. 

The Packers did not pick up Jones’s fifth-year option, so instead he played for the 49ers and Cowboys in 2017 before settling in Dallas for 2018 when he played one game for the Cowboys. Jones was effectively out of the league but returned in 2020 to play one game for the Las Vegas Raiders and recorded his first tackle since 2017. 

Because of his size at 6-foot-4 285 pounds, Jones hung around in the league for a while, but he was never an impact player, especially not the type you expect when you spend a first-round pick on a player.