STORRS, Conn. —They lined up, three or four deep in a semicircle around Travis Jones. Dozens of NFL note-takers watched every move Wednesday, looking for something they didn’t already know.
Jones didn’t need to impress on UConn’s Pro Day, his performances at the Senior Bowl and the NFL Combine had already catapulted him into the stratosphere of draft projections. He did a series of drills, bursting out of a three-point stance, moving in a circle, pushing blocking them upfield as reps from all 32 NFL teams looked on. There are movements that mean little to the untrained eye, but in the maelstrom that forms in the middle of a line of scrimmage, they matter, and the trained eyes have been trained on Jones for some time.
“He’s going to be a dynamic NFL player,” said Lou Spanos, UConn’s defensive coordinator and formerly an NFL assistant. “High football instinct, measurables, length, speed, explosion, and doing what it takes on and off the field, it makes a successful professional. That’s what Travis Jones is.”
He may have played on an historically ineffective UConn defense, but Travis Jones, defensive tackle, could make history in the NFL Draft come April 28. The top analysts suggest Jones, 6 feet 4, who weighed in at 333 pounds for scouts at UConn, won’t have to wait past Day One of the three-day draft. ESPN’s Mel Kiper has him going to the Bengals at the end of the first round at No. 31. Several have him going to in the 20s, others as high as No. 17.
Jones could be the highest-drafted Husky ever, a distinction now shared by Byron Jones (2015) and Donald Brown (2009), both No. 27 picks.
Even more important to him, Jones, who played at Wilbur Cross High. could complete the rarely traveled route from New Haven’s public schools to the NFL.
“That would be big for me,” Jones said after his drills. “Making it to ‘The League’ and having New Haven on my back and have little kids look up to me, that would be important to me. I feel like if I make it, a lot of kids are going to look up to me and strive to be a football player, putting in the work, time and effort to make it.”
The message Jones would like to send is that all of this became possible because he has worked relentlessly on his craft.
“Days when no one’s in the weight room, I’ve seen Travis in there, getting reps in, shoulder workouts,” said Omar Fortt, UConn defensive back who was also auditioning, along with teammates and players from other schools in the area.
“He’s the strongest guy I know, by far,” said UConn offensive lineman Ryan Van Demark. “If you see him in the weight room, it’s something amazing. His mentality, no one’s going to beat him, he’s going to get to the quarterback every rep and he’s going to find that ball.”
Teammates say Jones is more fun-loving, “goofy,” Fortt said, than he lets on, but he has consistently worked on his body while at UConn, dropping 30 pounds, especially during the year the football team shut down due to COVID-19. Throughout the disastrous 2021 season, Jones drew eyeballs from the center of the line of scrimmage, usually requiring a center and a guard to block him, which is what makes a college lineman project as a nose tackle in the NFL.
When the Huskies went to Clemson Nov. 14, it was Jones’ chance to show he could compete against top competition.
“I challenged him, we challenged him,” Spanos said. “‘Hey, you’ve got to perform. This a great opportunity for us and for him to showcase his talents, and he had an outstanding game.”
His performance earned him an invitation to play in the Senior Bowl.
“I had same mindset I have every game, to go out there and dominate,” Jones said. “I was just a little more consistent in that game. It was fun going down there, playing a big Power Five school with a lot of people there. Playing schools with bigger names, you have a good game against those guys, people are going to take note of your talents.”
Jones finished the season with 47 tackles, 7 1/2 for loss, with 4 1/2 sacks. The consensus then was he could be a third-round draft pick, eventually a starter in the NFL. Then came another high level performance at the Senior Bowl, where offensive linemen voted him the top defensive tackle after the week of practice.
At the NFL Combine early in March, Jones went from blip on the radar to all caps on the league’s value boards, running a 4.92-second 40-yard dash, quite good for a man his size. His other measurables, an 82-inch wing span, low body fat (13 percent), 455 pounds in the bench press, 32 reps at 225 pounds, 615 in the squat, 28 1/2-inch vertical leap and 4.57 in the shuttles, 7.41 in the 3-cone drill, all suggest high-level speed and agility for a 330-plus pound lineman.
With those numbers, Jones doesn’t need to do much more than maintain. He’ll train in New Jersey before the draft with a former Husky, Foley Fatukasi, who just left the Jets to sign a three-year, $30 million free agent deal with Jacksonville.
“It’s a great experience, growing up watching this on TV and YouTube and now finally being here,” Jones said. “The experience has been everything I thought it was, me and a lot of people from different schools making a new brotherhood. I always thought I could make it to the NFL, because with the work I put in, and the work ethic I’ve got, it would be possible.”
