How Texas lineman Christian Jones grew from a soccer player into an NFL prospect | Golden
Former Texas right tackle Christian Jones is relatively new to football.
To be more specific, he’s relatively new to American football.
While most of the players he worked with at this weekend’s NFL scouting combine were wearing pads and helmets before they learned their multiplication tables, the former soccer player didn’t take up the sport until the 11th grade at Houston Cypress Woods High.
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A man who who stands to make millions if his NFL dreams come to fruition has played the game for only eight years and has been an offensive lineman for seven, but his improvement in a relatively short time screams at a gigantic upside and a possible steal for the team that selects him the weekend of April 25.
The 6-foot-5, 318-pound tackle experienced some ups and downs in his six seasons at Texas, but he’s a product of those experiences, a 24-year-old young man who speaks like a wise old college professor with exuberant eyes that light up like an 8-year-old’s on Christmas morning when he’s engaged in conversation.
He has spent these last weeks since the Longhorns' Sugar Bowl loss to Washington working out at Exos Performance Training with fellow NFL combine participants Ryan Watts, Byron Murphy II, J’Tavion Sanders, T’Vondre Sweat, Adonai Mitchell and Jonathon Brooks.
“It’s like a mini (Texas) squad here,” Jones said last week.
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Trying to start a new tradition at Texas
Jones is out to start a pipeline of sorts at a position that hasn’t yielded many Horns to the draft lately. His selection would be a start, especially if his returning understudy Kelvin Banks Jr. declares for the draft after his junior season. The starting left tackle has been considered a future first-round pick since the day he arrived on campus and has done nothing to diminish the lofty projections.
For his part, Jones wants to be the start of a trend of Texas offensive linemen getting selected for the next level. For all the players who have left Texas for the NFL, the program has produced only eight drafted offensive linemen since 2001 and just two in the past six drafts: Connor Williams, who went to the Dallas Cowboys in the second round in 2018, and Sam Cosmi, another first-rounder whom Washington tabbed in the second round in 2021.
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Jones dreams of a career in football, far removed from his childhood aspirations.
Going from on the pitch to making a pitch for football
As a child of Jamaica-born parents who grew up playing soccer, Jones was destined to do the same. He loved the sport and played every position except goalie.
But a funny thing happened on his way to the English Premier League.
Nature happened.
There weren’t too many 6-3, 200-pound soccer players floating around Cy-Woods his junior year. He didn’t make a team. Any team. While his love for soccer never waned — he still followed the exploits of childhood heroes Yaya Touré and Cristiano Ronaldo — it had become apparent he wouldn’t be able to parlay that love into a college career.
Besides, the football coaches at his high school had been eyeballing him for a while. He remembered one coming up to him his freshman year, extending his hand and saying, “If you ever quit soccer, come play some football for us.”
A year later, Jones decided his days as a soccer player were over.
Then came the hard part: telling his soccer-loving folks. It was fine because they only wanted their oldest kid — they also have a daughter named Leila who plays tennis — to be happy.
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“Looking back on it, when I was a kid saying I loved soccer, my actions showed that I love football more than I love soccer," he said. "And I believe that's why I had such good results in football over the years.”
Christian Jones' great support system starts at home
Noel Jones and Stacey Hall met as teenagers on a city bus in St. Thomas, a parish in the southeastern part of Jamaica. For Noel, it was love at first sight.
Growing up Jamaica, football was the sport, but not the one that’s so popular nowadays. So it was a bit of a shock that their boy would take up a sport other than the one that's the passion of so many around the world. The plan was that Christian would be a soccer player in college and get some form of scholarship: academic, athletic or a combination.
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At first they were hesitant.
“We’re not doing football, Christian,” Noel said. “That is a widow maker. We’re Jamaican. We do soccer, cricket or maybe basketball.”
They came around eventually and gave their blessing under one condition: Christian would have to give maximum effort at all times. Noel also decided the kid would need to add some bulk, so they enlisted the aid of local trainer Cameron Nwosu-Bey, a former Rice football player who once set an NCAA record with three blocked extra points in a first half against UCLA and now runs Pr Fitness Lab in Cypress with former CFL player Eddie Russ.
Nwosu-Bey, who trained current Detroit Lions tight end Brock Wright and New York Jets tackle Austin Deculus the same year he started with Jones, said he began working with Jones with three games remaining in his junior season. The kid was a backup defensive end getting a handful of snaps a game. He already stood 6-3 but looked more like a power forward than a defensive end.
“He was 212 pounds soaking wet,” Nwosu-Bey said. “But man, he was an athlete. He had every measurable a college coach would want. He was one of those kids that you knew if he was in the right environment with the right people, he would excel.”
This was a different assignment for the trainer, working with someone who was just learning how to play the sport.
Physically, the trainer saw the attributes of an offensive tackle: the long arms, the quick feet. He told Jones he should move to the other side of the line. He saw something in the youngster during those brutal summer workouts in the searing Texas heat their first offseason together.
“Houston is a different beast,” he said. “It was a great opportunity to see how bad he wanted it. The grit was there. The sacrifice was there. He didn’t quit.”
The muscles came — from the workouts and his mother's home-cooked meals — and so did the scholarship offers. Coaches rolled into Cypress from all over, including Alabama’s Nick Saban. While Jones was listed as a three-star prospect by many recruiting services, the coaches were well aware that he was a newcomer to the sport. They saw the upside.
The plan at first was to attend Cal-Berkeley and play defensive end, but he switched because Longhorns coach Tom Herman was the only one who was interested in Jones playing on the offensive line. He liked the idea.
A Longhorn was born.
Texas struggles lead to the ultimate test of will
After taking a redshirt season in 2018, the season that ended with a Sugar Bowl win over Georgia, Jones played all 13 games in 2019, but only a couple of dozen snaps on the offensive line. In 2020’s abbreviated season, he started the first eight games at right tackle with Cosmi on the left side, but after Cosmi declared early for the draft, he started the Alamo Bowl win over Colorado at left tackle.
After Herman was fired, new hire Steve Sarkisian, seeing a need for experience at left tackle to protect inexperienced starting quarterback Hudson Card, moved Jones to left tackle full-time in 2021, a move that didn’t prove fruitful.
Jones was never comfortable there. As a left-hander who's right-eye dominant, the ride side felt more like home. That 2021 season was a nightmare. The Horns started 4-1 but then lost six straight, the program’s worst losing streak in more than 60 seasons. The lowlight came in a 57-56 overtime home loss to perennial Big 12 cellar dweller Kansas, which had lost its previous 56 conference road games.
The Jayhawks scored 28 first-half points that day, and one of those touchdowns was aided by edge rusher Kyron Johnson’s strip sack of Texas quarterback Casey Thompson. Johnson beat Jones on an outside speed rush and recovered the ball.
The 5-7 finish cast a pall over the city and the team.
“It broke me to my core,” Jones has said on multiple occasions in the years since, and despite some great success that followed, it still bothers him today.
And that’s where his support system helped put him back together.
“I told him, ‘Christian, you made a mistake, but a game is not decided on one play,’” Noel Jones said. “Learn from it and use it as fiber. Even something that is hard to digest can eventually help. It can keep you regular.’”
Jones has gone from a player who might have worn out his welcome after three seasons to one of the coolest success stories on campus. He made up his mind not to allow that experience to define him or his team. He and roommate Junior Angilau, who played right guard alongside Jones, rose early for workouts in the spring of 2022 and pushed each other in the weight room and at home, where film study and preparation became bigger priorities.
“I’m the best right tackle in the country,” Jones would say to himself several times a day.
Angilau blew out his knee weeks before the opener, a real crusher for the duo, but Jones told reporters he would play each down for his buddy. What followed was his best season ever and nods of approval from offensive line coach Kyle Flood, who pushed him to his limits in the offseason.
“He changed my life,” Jones said. “He could have easily given up on me (after 2020), but he saw something in me that I probably didn’t see in myself.”
Along the way, he became one of the most respected players in the locker room. When Sarkisian and his wife stepped off the plane in New Orleans a week before the Sugar Bowl, Jones was the first player off, holding a Longhorns flag aloft.
Jones could have declared for the draft after 2022, but he knew a sixth year in college might improve his stock. And it has. He got raves from coaches at the Senior Bowl, and several YouTube clips show him winning big in one-on-one drills.
The tape doesn’t lie.
The draft: Will Christian Jones' name be called?
The family will probably not attend the draft since Jones is projected as a third-round choice.
If ever there was a self-made man from the 2023 Longhorns, it’s the right tackle who put in the work to turn himself into a legitimate pro starter over the past two seasons. After allowing five sacks in 10 games in 2020, he allowed only eight over his last 38, including just one last season. In the 34-24 statement win at Alabama, he didn't allow a single quarterback pressure.
Scouting reports point to the potential to be an elite run blocker and improved hands in pass protection, though there are concerns about penalties (31 flags over four years).
He didn’t play any guard in college but might actually follow the lead of Connor Williams, who moved from tackle to guard at Dallas before finding a home at center in Miami. Jones has the build to be an effective guard eventually, just like former Texas star Justin Blalock, who played mostly tackle in college.
Wherever he lands, Jones will take with him a lunch pail work ethic born from parents who taught him the value of service to others from their work aiding people with developmental disabilities and also the importance of a team.
True to his nature, Jones’ draft thoughts aren’t all centered on the man in the mirror.
“I’ll be happier to see my other guys get drafted,” he said.
He’s from good stock, so it makes sense that his draft stock is growing by the day.
This article originally appeared on Austin American-Statesman: Texas lineman Christian Jones was a soccer fan, now an NFL prospect
