Whenever Jalen Hurts is asked about a defense the Eagles are about to face, he always says, \u201cThey fly around.\u201d<\/p>\n
New Eagles cornerback Jonathan Jones literally flies around.<\/p>\n
Jones is a certified pilot, and on Wednesday he flew from Charlotte to Philadelphia in his Daher TBM single-engine turboprop before formally signing his one-year contract with the Eagles.<\/p>\n
\u201cHopped over from Charlotte today over to here,\u201d he said on a Zoom call after landing. \u201cIt was a quick flight. Anytime I can fly, I love it.\u201d<\/p>\n
Jones earned his pilot\u2019s license in April of 2023 after taking flying lessons at Norwood Airport outside Boston while he was still with the Patriots.<\/p>\n
Now he flies whenever he has the chance.<\/p>\n
\u201cFound a little passion for aviation a few years back,\u201d Jones said. \u201cAnd so it’s something, a little hobby of mine that I enjoy doing.<\/p>\n
\u201cI’m always looking for new hobbies. And I grew up as a country boy. And so always outside, bikes, four wheelers, and it was just kind of my nich. Got exposed to general aviation, took a discovery flight and I fell in love with it.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt was kind of nice to have the approach (Wednesday morning) over the Delaware River. It was kind of a nice touch for the morning.\u201d<\/p>\n
Jones is pretty interesting even without the aviation side of things. He\u2019s going into his 11th season in the NFL, the first nine with the Patriots and last year with the Commanders. He\u2019s played in 144 games, starting 78, including seven last year.<\/p>\n
With the Eagles, he\u2019ll back up both outside and in the slot, adding depth to a cornerback room that already has Quinyon Mitchell, Cooper DeJean, Riq Woolen and Michael Carter Jr.<\/p>\n
\u201cI just love aggression,\u201d Jones said. \u201cI love to fly around on the field, make plays, support my teammates and just just try to be a cerebral player and try to dissect offenses and really understand how they’re trying to attack us and just go out there and compete.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think I have a good philosophy of how defenses are good at stopping offenses and eliminating explosive plays. As a cornerback, you play long enough, you realize you’re not going to stop every play. You start to learn which plays are the important plays that you have to make and which become game-changing plays.\u201d<\/p>\n
Jones said he\u2019s admired the Eagles from afar both during his tenure with the Patriots \u2013 he was hurt and didn\u2019t play in Super Bowl LII in New England \u2013 and last year with Washington.<\/p>\n
\u201cI kind of admire what this team’s been building over the last few years and just kind of some of the dominance they’ve been performing across the league year in and year out,\u201d he said. \u201c<\/p>\n
\u201cYou watch week in and week out, finding ways to win and saying relavent. I think that’s so hard in this league. Every team has good players but just finding that chemistry in the team to still be relevant to make the playoffs. I think that’s special year in and year out. Because a lot of teams will be in the playoffs one year and you might not hear from them for three or four more years so to be back in the playoffs (every year) just the tradition this team has, that is kind of my calling card.\u201d<\/p>\n
Jones has crafted a pretty fair career for a guy who was undrafted out of Auburn.<\/p>\n
His 144 career games played are most by an active undrafted defensive back and 7th-most among active position players.<\/p>\n
\u201cI just love the game of football,\u201d he said. \u201cI was joking with my wife. I was like, \u2018You know, even when I’m done playing football, if I could find a park to play some football, I’m going to continue to do it.\u2019<\/p>\n
\u201cI just I love the game of football. I always have. I can’t remember like before football. Every fall since I was 4 I’ve been playing football. Soit’s just what I know.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Whenever Jalen Hurts is asked about a defense the Eagles are about to face, he always says, \u201cThey…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":821233,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2068],"tags":[25,4904,7,6,242,109,2476],"class_list":{"0":"post-821232","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-philadelphia-eagles","8":"tag-eagles","9":"tag-eagles-blog","10":"tag-football","11":"tag-nfl","12":"tag-philadelphia","13":"tag-philadelphia-eagles","14":"tag-philadelphiaeagles"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nfl\/116256182349587264","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/821232","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=821232"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/821232\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/821233"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=821232"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=821232"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=821232"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}