Travis
Jones.
Travis
Jones.
UConn· 6'4"· 325 lb· 4.92s 40
Jones is a true nose tackle who plays over the center and both A-gaps, and the calling card is mass with movement. At roughly 6-5 and 333 pounds he takes on double teams without giving ground, keeps his hands inside and stacks blockers at the line so the linebackers behind him stay clean.
The second trait is the get-off, which is why he is more than a two-down body. He can cross a guard's face on a slant and collapse the pocket from the middle, and his 4.5 sacks in a final UConn season on a bad team came from pure interior push. Against the pass he tires late in long drives. The separator is the combination of anchor and first step in one frame that big.
Jones's exceptional size and power make him a prime candidate for a two-gap 3-4 defensive scheme that emphasizes holding and shedding blocks.
Immediate rotational run-stuffer with a ceiling as a dominant nose tackle who can command double teams and collapse the pocket.
A purely penetrating 4-3 scheme that prioritizes quickness and disruption over raw power and block absorption would diminish his impact.
A powerful interior presence best suited for schemes that leverage his strength as a run defender and space eater.
2022 NFL Draft - Baltimore Ravens 76th Overall Pick - UConn Defensive Tackle Travis Jones
UConn cutup built around the draft selection, showing the double-team anchor work and interior push that defined his senior tape.
Travis Jones // Defensive interior // 2022 NFL Draft
Film breakdown of his defensive interior reps, focused on hand usage, get-off and how offenses schemed to block him.
Jones spent four years at UConn on teams that rarely won, which meant he faced double teams on virtually every snap and still produced. He is a classic zero and one-technique: enormous, thick through the lower half, and built to occupy the middle of a defensive front rather than chase statistics.
The production was quietly strong given the context. He posted 133 career tackles and 19 tackles for loss across 35 games, closing with 47 stops, 4.5 sacks and seven quarterback hurries in 2021 after UConn cancelled the 2020 season entirely, so he came out having played one full year in three. The tape showed a man who could reset the line of scrimmage on contact, and the flags were about conditioning and pass-rush plan: he wore down in long series and his hands were more powerful than refined.
The board treated him as one of the better true nose tackles available, a late-second to third-round name whose value depended on how much a defense cared about stopping the run. Taking him here was a bet on a specific, unglamorous job, and the only real question was whether a body that size could hold up over a 17-game season.
- 01
Double-team anchor
Routinely absorbed two blockers at UConn without surrendering ground, the exact trait that keeps a defense's linebackers clean on interior runs.
- 02
Rare size with burst
Roughly 6-5 and 333 pounds with a first step quick enough to cross a guard's face, a combination few interior bodies that heavy possess.
- 03
Interior pass rush
Collected 4.5 sacks and seven quarterback hurries in 2021 by pushing the pocket straight back rather than winning with technique.
- 04
Production against attention
Posted 133 tackles and 19 tackles for loss in 35 games on losing teams where every offense game-planned to block him first.
- 05
Positional versatility
Comfortable at zero, one and three technique, giving a defensive coordinator front flexibility without substituting.
- 01
Conditioning
Faded late in long possessions, which capped his snap counts and raised questions about whether he could carry a starter's workload.
- 02
Hand technique
Wins on raw power more than placement, and his rush arsenal was essentially bull rush with no reliable counter attached.
- 03
Level of competition
Four years in the American and as an independent meant limited reps against NFL-caliber interior linemen.
- 04
Splash ceiling
8.5 career sacks across 35 games says the impact will show up in other players' numbers rather than his own.
— — — positional median (p50)
- 40 yd
- 4.92sp50
- Vertical
- 28.5inp50
- Broad jump
- 110inp50
- Three-cone
- 7.33sp50
- Shuttle
- 4.58sp50
- Bench
- —rep
| Yr | Team | G | Tkl | Sk | Int | PD | FF |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2018 | UConn | 12 | 46 | 0.5 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| 2019 | UConn | 12 | 40 | 3.5 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| 2021 | UConn | 11 | 47 | 4.5 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| Career | — | 35 | 133 | 8.5 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
Seasons taken from Sports-Reference; tackles sum exactly to the 133 career total. cfbstats confirms 2021 at 47 tackles, 4.5 sacks and seven hurries but lists 6.5 tackles for loss against Sports-Reference's 7.0. No 2021 pass breakups per cfbstats. UConn cancelled its 2020 season, so there is no junior-year line.
A dash means the figure is not published by a source we trust — never a zero we invented.
A durable, respected run-stuffing anchor whose value lives in snap counts and gap integrity rather than sack totals.
The ceiling: a massive nose who eats double teams on early downs and still stays on the field to rush the passer.
Two-down body whose conditioning caps the workload and who bounces around the league as a rotational space-eater.
Everything above is the pre-draft evaluation. This section is what actually happened — updated year over year.
Travis Jones has played two seasons as a defensive tackle for the Baltimore Ravens. He has been a rotational player, contributing to their defensive line depth.
Baltimore did exactly what the evaluation suggested. Jones rotated as a rookie in 2022, took over more of the middle in 2023, and by 2024 was the anchor of a front that let the Ravens play light behind him. His 2025 season was the argument: six tackles for loss, a career high, five quarterback hits, 34 tackles through 12 games while playing 67 percent of the defensive snaps, an unusually heavy workload for a nose tackle, and PFF's 13th-best grade among full-time interior starters. Baltimore did not wait for free agency, signing him to a three-year, $40.5 million extension in December 2025 that placed him near the top 30 interior linemen in the league, and he opened 2026 as the starter.
In hindsight this is one of the best value picks of the third round. Everything the pre-draft report called a limitation, the conditioning, the unrefined pass-rush plan, got coached up inside a defense that knew precisely what it wanted from him. The market confirmed it: a small-school nose tackle taken 76th turned into a $13.5 million per year player. The only caveat is the one attached to the job itself, since his impact is a run-defense and double-team story that the box score will never fully capture.
Data note: Imported from Wikipedia 2022 NFL draft player selections table.