Erik Visits an American Grave, Part 1,681

This is the grave of Tony Jones.

Born in 1966 in Royston, Georgia, Jones was a big kid and became an offensive lineman. Now, information about somewhat average NFL offensive linemen is not overly available, so this is going to be short. Jones became a solid offensive lineman in high school, but really wasn’t considered any kind of a big college prospect. So he ended up at Western Carolina. WCU is in the Southern Conference, which is one of the best in the FCS division, although in recent years, the number of southern schools who have moved up to FBS means the Big Sky is probably the best FCS conference at this point.

In any case, Jones was a good offensive tackle at Western Carolina, but wasn’t considered a serious NFL prospect. Still, the number of undrafted free agents who go on to have really quality careers in the NFL is surprisingly high. Depends on the position though. For quarterbacks this never happens unless you are Kurt Warner. But for offensive linemen, this happens all the time and it did for Jones too. He signed with the Cleveland Browns in 1988 and stuck on the team and had a really solid eight year run there. In fact, he was second team All Pro in 1994, which really is very impressive. Oddly, he did not make the Pro Bowl that year, but he did toward the end of his career, in 1998. Jones then moved with the Browns to become the Baltimore Ravens in 1995 and played two years there. He kind of hated it. He didn’t mind Baltimore as a city. But he really loved Cleveland. He stated:

The Dawg Pound was probably the biggest thing in football. I was telling some of the younger guys on our team, I’ve never seen a better group of fans than the Dawg Pound. … Those guys were a big part of our team. They supported us through the good seasons and the bad.

Baltimore has turned into a great football town and Ravens fans are excellent and they have been a very solid franchise while the new Browns have been an endless shit show, so it’s hard to think back to when this move happened and look back on it as something bad, but it was really awful and, honestly, fuck Art Modell. Maybe one reason Jones loved Cleveland is that he almost died there and was touched by the response to him. He went into a procedure to remove bone spurs from his elbow, something totally routine. He had gone through this procedure 4 times before. But that day, it seems he had some kind of allergic reaction to the anesthesia. His heart stopped twice. They saved him. but there were three days there where they thought he might be a vegetable. Interestingly, he and his wife decided not to sue because they thought suing hospitals for something like that was bullshit, “dirty money” as they put it. Good for them. I mean that too, I am not sure how it was the hospital’s fault and the overly litigious culture of the U.S. really is not the best thing in the world.

Jones was a tough dude on the field too. He started 109 games in a row before a sprained knee forced him out of a playoff game. But he wanted out of Baltimore, the Ravens had drafted Jonathan Ogden (OK, pretty good call on that one!) and he decided to get out. The Ravens traded him to the Denver Broncos for a 2nd round pick, where he was a key starting linemen on their two Super Bowl teams. Jones played in 188 games in his NFL career, starting 178 of them, before retiring after the 2000 season. I think he was hurt after that 99 season and did not play. He could play both tackle positions too. In 98, he started at right tackle for the Broncos and in 99, he was tasked with the difficult job of protecting John Elway’s blindside at the left tackle position. Unfortunately, he did a good job, as I hate the fucking Broncos thanks to my extremely obnoxious Broncos fan brother, creating a true lifetime hatred.

Since there’s not much to say about an offensive lineman, allow me to digress a bit. As is well known here, I really love sports. Like, I think sports are just great in all their forms. But you know, as you grow up, you have to realize that rooting for teams is never going to repay you, outside of very rare occasions. There are a couple of exceptions to this rule. One is if you actually from New York or Los Angeles or Boston and you grew up rooting for the Yankees/Lakers/Celtics and whatnot and you have a lifetime of mostly success. Fine, whatever. The second is if you are a frontrunner who picks a team because they are good, despite having no natural connection to them, in which my contempt for you knows no heights. I mean, it’s fine if you were like 8 and the Miami Dolphins were actually good then and you became a lifetime Dolphins fan even though you live in Nebraska. Sure. But doing this at 35? No, you suck.

So given this situation, how does one maintain an interest in sports?

Hate.

You have to root for teams to lose. Since there aren’t that many winners, however you define it in sports, you can get a lot of joy rooting for the teams you loathe to lose. As a lifetime Cowboys hater, do you understand the kind of joy I’ve had in the NFL playoffs for a long time now? More than I’ve gotten from the Seahawks of late, I’ll tell you that much! Or Yankees Elimination Day? Man that’s a great day. I was highly disturbed in college football last year when the Washington Huskies went to the college football finals, but lucky Michigan whipped them like the little dogs they are.

Anyway, teach your kids to hate in sports.

In any case, I don’t really hold it against Jones for being good at blocking for Elway. He was just doing his job. He retired after the 2000 season. Unfortunately, kidney disease took him pretty young. I am not sure if he ever lost the weight it takes to be an offensive lineman in the NFL, which takes a lot of guys too young if they can’t lose it. In any case, he died in 2021. He was 54 years old.

Tony Jones is buried in Rose Hill Cemetery, Royston, Georgia.

While Jones was undrafted, he was in the class drafted in 1988 and if you want this series to visit other people in that class, you can donate to cover the required expenses here. Craig “Ironhead” Heyward, drafted 24th by the New Orleans Saints, is in Lawrenceville, Georgia, and Jarvis Williams, drafted 42nd by the Miami Dolphins, is in Palatka, Florida. It seems impossible that a lot of guys from the 88 draft are dead, but the living are almost 60 now, so it actually makes sense because I am old. Previous posts in this series are archived here and here.