Inside the rise of the Vikings' two Pittsburgh pass rushers
Patrick Jones II and Jaylen Twyman will try to carry their college success over to the pro ranks with the Vikings
By Sam Ekstrom
When Charlie Partridge took his post as Pittsburgh Panthers defensive line coach in 2017 after a three-year stint as head coach at Florida Atlantic, he had no clue the bounty he was inheriting.
Defensive end Patrick Jones II was a three-star recruit that had redshirted in 2016. Same for edge rusher Rashad Weaver, who was only a two-star recruit. Defensive tackle Jaylen Twyman was an incoming three-star freshman that would eventually be redshirted in his first year.
Nothing about this trio screamed NFL. Not yet, anyway.
After four seasons under the tutelage of Partridge and head coach Pat Narduzzi, all three are realizing their NFL dreams: Weaver with the Tennessee Titans, Jones and Twyman with the Minnesota Vikings.
Minnesota selected teammates Jones and Twyman in the third and sixth rounds, respectively, giving defensive line coach Andre Patterson two new prospects to mold on a roster that’s looking for more depth at defensive end and 3-technique.
“We kind of got on Patrick fairly early in the process of starting to watch guys,” said head coach Mike Zimmer. “Pat plays really, really hard. Twyman opted out [in 2020], but he had some big sack numbers the year before, and he's athletic.”
An extensive conversation with Partridge revealed exactly what the Vikings are getting in the two former ACC stars, a pair of rookies with uncommon work ethic and an insatiable appetite for watching film, who sharpened each other during their unique careers at Pitt and now get an opportunity to navigate the pro level together.
“It was fun to watch,” Partridge said.
‘He was beating me into the office’
Jones didn’t get a chance to lay down many roots growing up in a military family. He was born in Japan, the start of a nomadic upbringing that took him all over the globe. The 22-year-old says he moved nine times by age 14. His family returned to the United States after a five-year stint in Japan, following a three-year stretch in Italy.
“Just moving around that much, it made me very cultured,” Jones said. “It made me very well-rounded, just having to adjust to so many different situations. It made me appreciate where I’m at at the moment.”
After considering Virginia Tech, Jones wound up further north at the University of Pittsburgh. He redshirted in 2016 and then Jones got a new position coach in Partridge, whose influence would help shape the player he wanted to become.
“His first year in college he was a college kid with unexpected freedom, and that first year focused on that new freedom,” Partridge said. “When you lay out, 'Hey man, you've only got a few more years and you have all these lofty goals, your actions are not matching your goals.' The good news is he was able to understand and articulate in his mind what all that meant. There's nothing bad that he was doing. He was just being a semi-typical college kid, but he had really, really high goals, and his actions weren't matching them at that time.”
It didn’t take long for Jones to gather himself and become a contributor on the 2017 team, then a rotational staple in 2018 as he matured physically and played all over the defensive line.
“After that first year when he went back to his roots, his focus and level of seriousness was extremely impressive,” Partridge said. “He was beating me into the office at times, and I'm an early morning guy, so he made me get here even earlier so I could get my work done, so I could meet extra with him at 6 in the morning oftentimes. He loves to prepare, extremely hard worker on the field, held everyone around here accountable once he reached the status where everyone saw and respected what he was doing and really made the whole group better by holding those guys accountable. He's a pretty unique dude.”
Partridge instilled in Jones a craving for film, which Jones took to new levels. The defensive end said that he would study upcoming tackles to see whether they were high punchers or low punchers, which would dictate his pass-rush moves. A couple of Jones’ favorites were “ghost,” which Partridge described as, “a fake one-arm power to a speed move,” and a cross-chop. The defensive line coach had Jones trying different moves each week to figure out what worked.
A lot of those moves came from established pros that Jones would watch as well.
“Shoot, I watched a lot of film,” Jones said. “Of course I watched Aaron Donald, because he was at Pitt, even though he plays D-tackle, but he lines up at the edge sometimes. I watched Khalil Mack, I watched T.J. Watt, I watched Yannick [Ngakoue]. I watched Danielle Hunter when he started making noise. He really caught my attention of how he was doing it. And then, shoot, I watched so many people. I watched Preston Smith. I watched J.J. Watt. I watched so many people. I probably watched two hours in the morning, two hours in the afternoon, an hour after practice -- probably about five hours a day I’m watching film. So probably like 20-25 hours a week of just film I was studying.”
From Jones film-watching obsession came a great technical proficiency that started showing up in 2018. Partridge remembers a specific play from the fourth quarter against Notre Dame that season where Jones, playing right end, knocked back two Fighting Irish into the backfield and set up a tackle for loss (video below).
“It was such a beautiful technical play, I remember thinking at that time,” Partridge said. “I was fired up. He didn't even make the play and I was fired up, because it was one of those moments where he really kind of took off from there. He's so explosive, he's fast.”
‘I was trying to protect his foot, and he got really mad at me’
While Jones needed a brief reality check to focus in at the college level, Twyman needed no such correction.
Before Partridge had seen Twyman practice, he was struck by his curiosity at a team barbeque in 2017. At the time, Twyman was a brand new recruit from the Washington D.C. area.
“He came in from Day 1 and asked really, really high level questions for a young kid,” Partridge said. “It's not like they were high-level, technical football questions. They were just really philosophical, in a way. … He was asking questions like, 'Coach, what is the best job you've ever seen a freshman do in fall camp that really drew your attention?' That's not a question that freshmen ask. They're just so worried about getting their Xbox set up in their dorm room, but that type of question -- and it evolved over the years -- is how his mind works.”
The Panthers had a unique arrangement with the Pittsburgh Steelers as both shared practice space at the UPMC Rooney Sports Complex. That gave Panthers players rare access to professional athletes, assuming they weren’t too shy to approach them. Twyman was not.
“He would wear those guys out in a good way,” Partridge laughed. “He'd go up to Cam Heyward, T.J. [Watt], he'd go up to those dudes, 'Hey, I saw how you won this sack, tell me how you've been working on that,' and that started from the day he walked in.”
Twyman also struck up a relationship with Aaron Donald, a Pitt alum, one of the league’s most fearsome defensive tackles and similarly undersized like Twyman, who is under 6-foot-2 and 300 pounds. The two formed a mentor-mentee relationship that blossomed into a friendship. Twyman even adopted Donald’s old number, 97, to wear in 2019 when exploded onto the scene.
“I think now that they're essentially peers,” Partridge said. “I think they'll constantly be talking to each other about techniques that work, techniques that don't, things that are changing. It's going to be a lifelong relationship, in my opinion.”
Like Jones, Twyman was rotating into games in 2018 but not starting. The 15-25 snaps per game he was receiving wasn’t enough for Twyman, even though he was a redshirt freshman.
“He got frustrated because he wanted to play more,” Partridge recalled. “He also had a slight injury to his foot, nothing major, but we had veterans, I was trying to protect his foot, and he got really mad at me. I told him, 'Jaylen, I'm trying to protect your foot, you've got a ton of time, trying to do right by you.' And he was emotional. He said, 'Coach, don't worry about my foot, that's my problem. If you think I can play, play me.' Jaylen felt that running clock the second he walked in here.”
Thanks to a film-watching habit that rivaled Jones’s and a propensity to ask the right questions, Twyman’s football IQ was off the charts, according to Partridge. Once he was given a bigger opportunity, Twyman wasted no time.
The year it came together
Everything peaked in 2019 for the Jones-Twyman tandem.
Ten-and-a-half sacks and first-team All-ACC honors for Twyman — wearing Donald’s jersey number, no less. Eight and a half sacks and second-team All-ACC honors for Jones. The 19 combined sacks helped the Panthers go 8-5 that season with a bowl win.
“It was like having a partner in crime,” Jones said. “We were out there, just doing our thing, going back there every day and just getting after the quarterbacks. It was just amazing. We were just talking about that today when we were warming up [at rookie camp] -- like, it’s crazy that we actually got drafted together.”
Twyman finished 15th nationally in sacks and was credited with 17 run stops and 21 hurries. Jones had four forced fumbles to go with his 8.5 sacks. Twyman gave Jones a nod for their collective success, one of the many sources he soaked up knowledge from in his college career.
“Patrick, he’s a dog,” Twyman said on draft day. “He understands the game. We come from the same coach, Coach Partridge, who’s taught us a lot of stuff. [Jones] is one of the people that was carrying me on through practice and telling me certain things, how to learn and stuff like that. Just watching him and him learning from me, us piggybacking off of each other is the reason for our success, so I definitely have faith in Patrick.”
Partridge, though, believes Twyman’s interior pressure was a catalyst for the success of his defensive ends.
“I tell you what, anytime you have a guy that can generate as much pressure as Jaylen did from the middle, it's going to affect everything,” Partridge said. “If the quarterback is able to step up with room, you're not even going to notice what those ends are able to do. Jaylen was such a force from the inside that year that it really helped out all the D-ends, including Patrick.”
Such a storybook season should have had a storybook ending, but a remarkable 2019 gave way to a 2020 that contained plenty of challenges. Twyman opted out for family reasons during the pandemic, while Jones chose to return for another year after getting the impression from evaluators that he could do more to increase his draft stock. While Twyman spent the year training, Jones backed up his 2019 with a solid 2020. He finished top 10 nationally in sacks among defensive ends with nine and graded out top 25 in pressures and top 15 in run defense, per Pro Football Focus.
Yet both Twyman and Jones entered the draft with questions about their physical profile. Jones pulled up with a hamstring issue during his 40 time, leaving a key piece of his resume incomplete. Twyman ran 5.51 and 5.39 40 times, which would’ve been bottom five at last year’s combine and raised questions about his quickness as a 3-technique, even though his 40 bench reps were off the charts.
Heading into the 2021 draft, their statuses were still uncertain. Jones was ranked just 190th on PFF’s Top 200, and Twyman didn’t make the list.
Getting the call
Jones was the fortunate one. He didn’t have to sweat the nervous Friday night wondering how far he might fall on Day 3 of the draft. The Vikings nabbed him with the 90th overall pick, their last of four third-round selections.
“At the time that we picked him, he was the top guy there of the pass rushers we had left,” said scouting director Jamaal Stephenson on draft night. “He’s also an incredible athlete.”
Partridge insists that Jones would’ve posted an excellent 40 time if he’d finished his run at the Pro Day, and Spielman seemed to agree that his athleticism fit the Vikings’ benchmark.
“He fit our athletic profile,” Spielman said. “The 40 time that we had on him, about three quarters of the way down he pulled up. So he kind of jogged through the last part of that 40. But when you see length, his lean long frame coming off the edge, I know as a scouting staff with what coach Patterson and coach Zimmer look for and those type of defensive ends similar to when we took D.J. Wonnum, similar to when we took Danielle Hunter. Those long, athletic guys can come in and Dre does a great job developing those type of athletes even though they may be raw when they first come in.”
Twyman lasted until Pick 199, Minnesota’s final selection of their 11-man draft. The team posted a video of Twyman receiving the phone call from Spielman, and the rookie was so overcome with emotion he could barely get a word out.
“He'd been working for that moment a long time,” Partridge said. “Like most kids, he'd hoped that he would get drafted a little earlier, I'm sure that added some emotion to it. And then there was relief that he got drafted and just excited to move on to his next journey. The more you invest, the more emotional you're going to be in a moment like that.”
Zimmer hasn’t been deterred in the past using undersized 3-techs, so he’s hopeful Twyman can grow into a situational pass-rushing role. The head coach believes Twyman’s short-area quickness will translate despite the subpar 40 time.
“The three-technique position, we're looking for guys that have the twitch and acceleration,” Zimmer said. “One of the things we tried to do when I had Geno Atkins and some of those guys who are a little bit smaller size guys is that we look for nickel pass rushers and they kind of grow into the spot. We're hoping he can do that.”
Twyman shaved his weight down to 293 as he reported to Vikings rookie camp.
“The 3-technique is something that I feel like I specialize in,” said Twyman. “Aaron Donald, Grady Jarrett, Geno Atkins, John Randle, those type of guys are usually my size, so I don’t try to look at it as, ‘If I was 6-foot-4,’ you know what I mean?”
There are no guarantees for the two pass rushers going forward. Both will need to compete hard to find reps, but it won’t be impossible. Beyond Danielle Hunter, the Vikings have few entrenched defensive ends, and they’ll need pass-rushing specialists at defensive tackle to spell Dalvin Tomlinson and Michael Pierce.
After being separated by Twyman’s opt-out in 2020, Jones and Twyman are in position again to sharpen each other in their new organization. Their pro careers will be a smashing success if they someday find a way to duplicate their 2019 season.
“That’s all it was,” said Jones of their breakout season, “just pushing each other to be better.”
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Great article.... Both guys seem pretty driven and with coach Andre, it is tempting to thinking that at least 1 if not both will pan out... They seem like grinders which bodes well.
Still a little amused with doubling up on Pittsburgh talent... but the faith is sitting pretty in coach Patterson, along with Zimmer Jr. What better way for the head coach's son to shine than to revitalize the Vikings defense.