Deacon Jones

Jones was born in Eatonville, Florida, and lived in a four-bedroom house with his family of ten.[2] Jones attended Hungerford High School, where he played football, baseball, and basketball.[3] During high school, Jones developed a lump in his thigh and learned that it was a tumor; he had surgery to remove it by Dr. Ron Alegria.[2]

Late in life, Jones told The San Diego Union-Tribune that when he was 14 years old, he witnessed a carload of white teenagers laughingly hit an elderly black woman with a watermelon. The woman died days later from the injury, and Jones recalls that there was never a police investigation. "Unlike many black people then, I was determined not to be what society said I was," Jones later recounted. "Thank God I had the ability to play a violent game like football. It gave me an outlet for the anger in my heart."[4]

Jones' college football career consisted of a year at South Carolina State University in 1958, followed by a year of inactivity in 1959 and a final season at Mississippi Vocational College, now known as Mississippi Valley State University, in 1960.[5]

South Carolina State revoked Jones' scholarship after they learned that he participated in a protest during the Civil Rights Movement.[2] However, one of the assistant football coaches at South Carolina State was leaving to coach at Mississippi Vocational, and told Jones and some of the other African-American players that he could get them scholarships at the new school.[2] While he was playing at Mississippi Vocational, he and his African-American teammates had to sleep in cots in the opposing team's gym because motels would not take them on numerous occasions.[2]

Due to a lack of television coverage and modern scouting networks, Jones was largely overlooked during his college career. According to an NFL Films interview with writer Ray Didinger, "Deacon was discovered kinda by accident. The Rams were scouting some running backs and they found this defensive tackle who was outrunning the running backs that they were scouting." Jones was selected in the 14th round of the 1961 NFL Draft by the Los Angeles Rams. He then earned a starting role as a defensive end and teamed with tackle Merlin Olsen to give Los Angeles a perennial All-Pro left side of the defensive line.[5] He became a part of the Fearsome Foursome defensive line of the Rams (along with Lamar Lundy, Rosey Grier, and Olsen), which is now considered to have been one of the best defensive lines of all time.[6]

Jones won consensus All-Pro honors five straight years from 1965 through 1969 and was second-team All-Pro in 1964, 1970, and 1972. He was also in seven straight Pro Bowls, from 1964 to 1970, and was selected to an eighth after the 1972 season with the San Diego Chargers.[5] He was voted the team's Outstanding Defensive Lineman by the Los Angeles Rams Alumni in 1962, '64, '65, and '66. In 1971, Jones suffered a severely sprained arch, which caused him to miss four starts, and he ended the season with 4½ sacks, his career-low to that point.

Jones was traded along with Lee White and Greg Wojcik from the Rams to the San Diego Chargers for Jeff Staggs, a second-rounder in 1972 (30th overall—Jim Bertelsen) and a second and third-rounder in 1973 (31st and 60th overall—Cullen Bryant and Tim Stokes respectively) on January 29, 1972.[8][9] He was named San Diego's defensive captain and led all Chargers' defensive linemen in tackles and won a berth on the AFC Pro Bowl squad. He concluded his career with the Washington Redskins in 1974.[5] In the final game of his NFL career, the Redskins allowed him to kick the point-after-touchdown for the game's last score. Along the way, Jones was named the Associated Press NFL Defensive Player of the Week four times: week 14, 1967; week 12, 1968; week 11, 1969; and week 10, 1970.

An extremely durable player, Jones missed only six games of a possible 196 regular-season encounters in his 14 National Football League seasons.[5]

Jones in 1972

He was elected to the Pro Football Hall of Fame in his first year of eligibility in 1980, and was named to the NFL's 75th Anniversary All-Time Team in 1994.[1] In 1999, he was ranked number 13 on The Sporting News list of the 100 Greatest Football Players, the highest-ranked player to have played for the Rams franchise, the highest-ranked defensive end, and the second-ranked defensive lineman behind Bob Lilly. The same year, he was named by Sports Illustrated as the "Defensive End of the Century".[1] In 2010, he was named to the inaugural class of the Black College Football Hall of Fame.[18]

• 1980 – Elected to South Carolina Athletic Hall of Fame[19]
• 1981 – Voted to the Central Florida Sports Hall of Fame[20]
• 1983 – Elected to the Florida Sports Hall of Fame[21]
• 1999 – Recipient of the Gale Sayers Lifetime Spirit Achievement Award[22]
• 1999 – Awarded "The Order of the Leather Helmet" by the NFL Alumni Organization, their highest honor[23]
• 2001 – Winner of the NFL Alumni Spirit Award for community service[24]
• 2005 – Recipient of the Junior Seau Foundation "Legend of the Year Award"[25]
• 2007 – Named to the Florida High School Association All-Century Team which selected the Top 33 players in the 100-year history of high school football in Florida's history[26]
• 2009 – His number 75 was retired by the Rams on September 27, 2009.[27]
• 2013 – An award for the league leader in sacks is named in his honor and awarded for the first time. Robert Mathis of the Indianapolis Colts was the inaugural award winner.[28]

Jones stated that he gave himself the nickname Deacon after joining the Rams because too many David Joneses were in the local phone book. "Football is a violent world and Deacon has a religious connotation," he told the Los Angeles Times in 1980. "I thought a name like that would be remembered."[29]

Jones' wife Elizabeth is the chief operating and financial officer of the Deacon Jones Foundation, based in Anaheim Hills, California,[2] the community in which the couple lived.

Jones was a rhythm and blues singer during his football days, and was backed by the band Nightshift, which later became the group War. Jones sang onstage with Ray Charles,[30] performed on The Hollywood Palace in 1967 and 1968, and on The Merv Griffin Show in 1970. Jones was the inspiration for the name of the 1977 song "Deacon Blues" by Steely Dan.[31]

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• Deacon Jones Foundation
• Deacon Jones at the Pro Football Hall of Fame
• Career statistics and player information from Pro Football Reference
• Deacon Jones at IMDb