When Mike Tomlin and Kevin Colbert attended Notre Dame’s pro day in March, they likely went to get a good look at offensive linemen, tight ends and linebackers. None of those prospects made their way to Pittsburgh over the course of seven rounds in April, but it wasn’t a complete waste of a day.
By the time the Steelers brass left that workout, they found themselves a new pass-rusher, one who wasn’t even eligible for this year’s draft. Back then, Kevin Colbert and Mike Tomlin probably weren’t penciling in Jamir Jones on the 2021 roster, but hey, it was worth a shot to bring the 6-foot-3, 255-pound late-bloomer into rookie camp.
“They said, ‘Can you be in Pittsburgh by Monday?’ ” Jones recalled recently. “I said, ‘Hell yeah.’ ”
Then, he made it to OTAs and minicamp. Then, he made it to training camp. Tuesday, he made the 53-man roster. Following in the footsteps of undrafted outside linebackers from preseasons past such as Ola Adeniyi and Tuzar Skipper — lest we forget, James Harrison — Jones earned his spot the hard way, even beating out a drafted rookie in sixth-round pick Quincy Roche.
“It was just a huge relief, you know? Going through the whole day, you try to be normal … and there’s so much uncertainty,” Jones said of his emotions leading up to Tuesday’s cut-down deadline. “You don't know how things are going to go. I was just sitting at my locker, waiting until 4 [p.m.], and when it hit — yeah, it was real.”
Jones led the NFL this preseason with nine quarterback hits. Only five players had more than his 2.5 sacks and only one had more than his three tackles for loss. Like Adeniyi before him, Jones’ strong preseason won’t necessarily translate to many snaps at outside linebacker in the regular season — not with T.J. Watt, Alex Highsmith and Melvin Ingram healthy — but his penchant for making an impact in another phase of the game punched his ticket.
He used his pass-rushing prowess to leap past Roche on the depth chart, and relied on effort to take a spot from veteran Cassius Marsh. Jones led all NFL players in special teams tackles this preseason with eight (four solo tackles, four assisted). Sure, it helps his counting numbers that the Steelers were one of two teams to play an extra game, but Jones’ total doubled up the next-closest behind him. No other player had more than four tackles on special teams, and only one had that many unassisted.
“It’s on the tape. I mean, look at him make plays,” special teams coordinator Danny Smith said Wednesday. “He’s a good player. He was a good player in the first game we played, and that caught my attention.
“He’s just scratching the surface. His talent level and his understanding are very real and very natural, and a guy like that’s easy to coach.”
Jones, whose older brother Jarron spent last season on the practice squad, is the only success story from the Steelers’ unusual approach to filling out their offseason roster. He’s one of five players who went undrafted in 2020 but were signed by the Steelers after showing their stuff at a 2021 pro day. But none of the others — receivers Mathew Sexton and Tyler Simmons, linebacker Jarvis Miller and defensive lineman T.J. Carter — even made it to the final wave of cuts.
So now, Jones can likely do without updating his LinkedIn page for a while. That’s where you’ll find the trail of odd jobs that helped sustain him while he was out of football last year after the shortest cup of coffee with the Texans — who had him in Houston for three days of conditioning and cut him before he even got fitted for a helmet.
Jones worked retail for a few months at Champs Sports in his hometown of Rochester, N.Y., did a brief stint with Amazon, then interned as a “content strategist” for LIFELENZ, a digital software company also in Rochester. These days when you pull up Jones’ work history, the current gig listed is “Professional Athlete • Pittsburgh Steelers • Full-time.”
“I knew that was something I didn't want to do,” Jones said last month of his 9-to-5 life. “It didn't take long to see that it made me go harder and push myself more and not give up on my dream.”
Brian Batko: bbatko@post-gazette.com and Twitter @BrianBatko.
First Published: September 2, 2021, 7:08 p.m.