Heaps: Sidney Jones ‘changed the complexion’ of Seahawks’ secondary

After a rough start to the season for Seahawks starting cornerback Tre Flowers, he was benched in favor of former UW Huskies standout Sidney Jones in Seattle’s Week 4 win over the San Francisco 49ers.

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Seahawks fans were clamoring for Jones to play over Flowers, especially after the latter had a rough Week 3 showing, and for the most part the results were pretty good in Seattle’s 28-21 road victory.

What did former NFL quarterback Jake Heaps make of Jones’ performance on Sunday? He shared his thoughts on Monday’s edition of Jake and Stacy on 710 ESPN Seattle.

Before Heaps broke down what he saw, he wanted to highlight what other Seahawks defenders thought of Jones’ play, pointing to postgame comments made by starting free safety Quandre Diggs.

“I think he’s a proven vet. He’s been in the league a few years now and knows what’s expected out of him,” Diggs said. “I think for us, it’s just continuing to communicate with him so when we do get in the heat of battle he knows exactly what he’s doing and we can’t put him in those positions where he doesn’t. I think as time continues to go, we’ll continue to have better communication and I think he’ll be playing a lot better. I’m excited to have him. I’ve heard good things about him (from Darius Slay, a former teammate of Diggs with Detroit and Jones with Philadelphia) so I kind of got the rundown on him and I think he’s going to help us a lot.”

Heaps said Diggs’ comments point to a level of comfort the other secondary members feel with Jones on the field.

“Like Quandre was saying, he will only continue to get better as he gets more and more comfortable and the communication becomes sharper,” Heaps said. “But you could just tell there was a lot more confidence in the safeties to be more aggressive over the middle of the field because they didn’t necessarily have to worry about the outside with D.J. Reed and Sidney Jones out there. That was exciting to see.”

One issue for Heaps, though, is that it took until Week 4 for the change to be made at cornerback.

“Where in the heck was he a week ago? That’s my biggest question,” Heaps said. “Why did this not play a week ago? You can’t tell me that difference of a week or that week made all the difference for him to perform the way that he did.”

As noted, Jones’ day wasn’t perfect by any means. But his performance, coupled with the play of Reed and Seattle’s safeties, was a vast improvement over how the secondary had played the previous two weeks.

“(Jones) gave up some plays. He was not perfect out there. There was a touchdown that was a deep cross that happened on him,” Heaps said. “But overall he had the confidence and willingness to get in the receiver’s face, and he had the confidence and willingness to jump routes. He changed the complexion of that secondary, particularly out on the edge. I loved seeing that.”

Listen to the Heaps’ comments on Jones in the podcast from the second hour of Monday’s Jake and Stacy at this link or in the player below.

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