At 6-foot-6 and around 260 pounds, the 2013 No. 3 overall pick Dion Jordan looked like he had the potential to do it all for the Miami Dolphins. But that hasn’t taken place to this point in his career, as he has played just 562 snaps in his career thus far, in part due to his being suspended for the entire 2015 season after multiple substance abuse violations.
He is reportedly set to apply for reinstatement to the league on Wednesday. If he does return to the field for Miami, what can we expect? Here are some things we know about his play to this point in his career:
The first is that Miami hasn’t seemed to know what to do with him. He has flashed positive grading in every area, but been consistently good at none. Over his rookie season he spent 69.3 percent of his snaps at defensive right end (DRE), and he began the 2014 season in the same fashion – playing 26 of 30 snaps in that spot in his first game back on the field that year.
But then the Dolphins started experimenting with his alignment, and two weeks later he lined up in 12 different positions on the defense in just 31 snaps, including split out to cover the slot and inside at defensive tackle. That was his most diverse game in terms of deployment, and he still always played more snaps at DRE than any other spot on defense, but the team continued to move him around throughout that season.
Ultimately, regardless of where he has lined up, we just haven’t seen a lot from Jordan to suggest he will dominate at any one spot. In the third game of his NFL career he earned an excellent pass-rushing grade, notching five pressures on only 31 snaps and 20 rushes, and against Detroit in 2014 he earned a solid grade in coverage, breaking up the only pass thrown his way – intended for Calvin Johnson. But these have always been fleeting glimpses.
Right now Jordan remains an unknown quantity, both in terms of his potential and in terms of his role in the NFL. Should his reinstatement be successful, the Dolphins need to work out what they are going to do with him on the field throughout this preseason. If the 2014 preseason is anything to go by, the answer is to just line him up at DRE and let him get after the passer. That preseason he had a positive pass-rush grade in three of the four games he saw snaps in, and was one of the more impressive rushers in the league during that span (see below).
