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Bills take Ohio State QB Cardale Jones in fourth round

Sal Maiorana
@salmaiorana
  • Cardale Jones started only 11 games at Ohio State, but he won all 11, including a national championship.
  • Doug Whaley said that Jones will probably slot behind EJ Manuel in the backup QB role in 2016.


Ohio State quarterback Cardale Jones.

ORCHARD PARK — Doug Whaley didn’t try to sell anyone a bill of goods in the moments after the Buffalo Bills picked Ohio State quarterback Cardale Jones at the end of the fourth round Saturday afternoon.

“We like his skill set, and he has the potential to be a franchise guy,” Whaley said. “Is he there yet? Absolutely not.”

No, he’s not. In fact, he’s not even remotely close, and Jones may very well wind up being the third-string quarterback on the Buffalo roster this year behind Tyrod Taylor and EJ Manuel.

But that would have been the case with anyone the Bills would have picked at that point in the draft. In Jones, a 6-foot-5, 253-pounder who possesses a cannon for an arm but lacks experience having started only 11 college games, the Bills have a 23-year-old who has the tools necessary to become a productive player in the NFL — at the very least as a solid backup, and maybe a starter down the road.

Sal's take on the Bills' 2016 draft

“This guy has stuff to work on, but he doesn’t have any muscle memory already ingrained in him that’s bad,” said Whaley. “We’ve got a piece of clay and we can mold him and we have some qualified guys to mold him. This guy’s a proven winner, he’s driven, he’s undefeated. We got a nice guy to work with, with a high upside.”

Jones expressed excitement over the fact that the Bills picked him because not only did he have a good feeling when he and a few of his Ohio State teammates – including Buffalo’s third-round pick, defensive tackle Adolphus Washington – visited here last month, he hit it off with quarterbacks coach David Lee.

“I feel like my ceiling is extremely high, and having a coach like coach Lee, I couldn’t have picked another guy to grow me,” said Jones. “I knew they were interested just from my visit. Coach Ryan was extremely honest with me. We had like six guys up there and he kind of told us right to my face, he told me and Adolphus, ‘Hey, if we get a chance to get both of you guys, we’re gonna grab you guys.’ Just being around a guy like that from the beginning, to put it all out on the table, to let us know he didn’t bring us out there just for anything, it was a great feeling.”

Jones sat patiently at Ohio State for two years after originally being recruited by former Buckeyes coach Jim Tressel. He redshirted his first year, barely played his second year, and wasn’t going to play much in his third year, 2014, until J.T. Barrett got hurt in the final regular-season game. Jones was thrust into the starting role and he helped the Buckeyes annihilate Wisconsin 59-0 in the Big Ten championship game, throwing for 257 yards and three touchdowns.

He then threw for 243 yards and rushed for 43 more as the Buckeyes beat Alabama 42-35 at the Sugar Bowl in the national playoff semifinal, and he closed his dream run with a 42-20 conquest of Oregon in the national championship game at the Fiesta Bowl. In that game he threw for 242 yards and was named MVP, as he was in the Big Ten title game.

In this edition of the SalSpeak Buffalo Bills podcast, Sal Maiorana is joined by ESPN's Mike Rodak to talk about the Bills' draft.

Cardale Jones will come to Buffalo as a work in progress and isn't expected to push for a starting job in 2016.

Jones entered 2015 as the starter, but he did not have the same type of production and even though he won all eight of his starts, giving him a career record of 11-0, coach Urban Meyer benched him in favor of Barrett.

He finished his career with 2,323 passing yards, 15 touchdowns, 7 interceptions, and a 61.9 completion percentage. In 2015, he was 110 of 176 for 1,460 yards with 8 touchdowns and 5 picks.

“Just being able to deal with adversity, knowing how to deal with it,” Jones said when asked what he learned from the turbulent 2015 season. “Having the right people around me to know I can lean on them, and I’m glad that my circle just improved with coach Ryan and coach Lee.”

What happened last year gave most NFL teams pause, part of the reason why he slipped all the way to the end of the fourth round which, given the fact there were nine compensatory picks so in essence, was early fifth round.

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Whaley acknowledged that and said the value at that spot really made sense for the Bills. “That goes into the thought process when you put a value on a guy,” Whaley said of Jones’ very short playing résumé. “We thought the upside was so big, where we were, and we looked at it as basically a fifth-round pick, and if we hit on a fifth-round pick, the upside is great. We think his floor is a solid No. 2, so to get a solid No. 2 in the fifth round was a good value.”

Based on Whaley bringing up the fact that Mississippi State’s Dak Prescott was taken earlier in the fourth round by Dallas, he may have been the Bills’ target, but no other quarterback was taken, so Jones was likely next on the Bills’ board.

“It was a whirlwind, not knowing, playing the waiting game, it was the longest three days of my life,” Jones said. “But it was all worth it to be in a position to play in one of the top organizations in the NFL.”

MAIORANA@Gannett.com

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