AP

Just about everyone on the Falcons had a big night in Thursday’s 56-14 destruction of the Buccaneers, but Atlanta receiver Julio Jones may have been the best player on the field.

Jones had nine catches for 161 yards and two touchdowns, and Falcons quarterback Matt Ryan was in awe of Jones’s 40-yard catch on a deep ball into the end zone.

“It was just a heck of a catch,” Ryan said. “He’s a special talent. We talk about it all the time. When we get him in that situation we feel like we can just put the ball up and he’s going to come down with it. He kind of inside released on the corner on his route. Then we talk about trying to stack and get back outside and he did a great job of that. The ball slightly went over his head and his ability to track that is as good as anybody’s. It was a great catch and a huge explosive play for us.”

Through three games this season, Jones has 23 catches for 365 yards and three touchdowns. Jones played only five games last year, but he had 41 catches for 580 yards and two touchdowns before he broke his foot. Throw in the 11 catches for 182 yards and two touchdowns that Jones had in the Falcons’ playoff loss after the 2012 season and in Jones’s last nine games he has 75 catches for 1,127 yards and seven touchdowns in his last nine games. That’s 125 yards a game, or a 2,000-yard season pace, something that’s never been done before in the NFL.

Julio Jones is, indeed, a special talent.