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An Interview with Deacon Jones
Tue. Sept. 22, 2009
By Nick Wagoner
Senior Writer
After a long fight to get him to open up a little bit, I had the good fortune of sitting down recently and having a long conversation with Hall of Fame Ram Deacon Jones.
Of course, I’m kidding about getting him to open up. Here’s the tranScript from that interview as we head toward a very special week for Jones.
The Rams will retire his No. 75 on Sunday in a pre-game ceremony.
NW: What was your first reaction when you first found out the Rams were going to retire your number?
DJ: That was the day I got out of the hospital from two major surgeries and I was feeling really (awful) that day. That really lifted my spirits. I have got to admit. It was the last thing on my mind was that information. I was sitting in the living room and I was really sick and really hurting and I got the call and it really lifted my spirits. I had a much better day. I was totally surprised. They caught me off guard, there’s no doubt about it. It wasn’t what I had on my mind. I was so delighted and happy. My whole family is.
NW: So the timing couldn’t have been better?
DJ: I have been waiting on it and they picked the right time to call me because that’s when I needed it. It frightened me. They say these things happen for a reason, that seemed like it was just perfect. It didn’t matter that it was 35 years it just mattered that it happened and it happened at a good time.
NW: You’ve been honored in many ways, what do you think will be going through your mind when you see that No. 75 raised to the rafters?
DJ: That’s always difficult to deal with. I’m a highly emotional person and I appreciate these things. I always did and I worked my ass off to try to get them. I will be a happy man, I know that. It will be a day to remember. It will be nice.
NW: What are you up to these days?
DJ: I haven’t been doing much. When I hit 65, I retired man. I just do what I want to do and when the best opportunity comes along, I handle it. Until I got sick, I do my foundation work and working with kids is always fun. You do those things and try to pick and choose and pick the best thing you can get the most out of.
NW: How are you feeling now?
DJ: My health is real good. I caught the thing very early and I had them fixed. I am just recuperating now and working out every morning. I have been doing that the last six weeks. I feel a lot better. I’m not quite there yet but I’m getting there.
NW: How close do you still follow football? Is it still a big part of your life?
DJ: Oh yeah. I was born to do that. That will always be a part of my life. I love watching the game, I love watching it being played properly. I am still (complaining) and moaning about the rule changes and giving the quarterbacks all the advantages. I dislike that and I dislike the rules being changed. The game is being played a little softer. I sit here and gripe about that every Sunday.
NW: Tell me about the origin of your signature move, the head slap?
DJ: It was a move they couldn’t block. It was as simple as that. If you had quick hands and a feel for pass rushing, you have got to be able to get off blocks and react. When I came into the league in 1961, in 1962 Merlin Olsen came along, my game and Rosey and Lamar Lundy was already there. When we got together we seemed to have been one of those blessed groups. We knew the direction we wanted to go in and we know the talent we had there. It was a joy going with those guys. It takes four men to rush the passer. You can’t do it by yourself and I was just blessed to have three other guys that were just fantastic. I owe everything to them. We grew together as a unit and out of things like that comes working on different moves and you find things in practice. I did not invent the head slap but Rembrandt didn’t invent painting either. I perfected it. I had those quick hands and quick feet. I had that knack to get off a block real quick and that usage of my hands came into play. As I perfected and grew with that move beating on dummies, I just transferred that to the regular people.
NW: Not many athletes can say they have been the direct reason a sport has had to change its rules. You are one of them.
DJ: Who else can say that?
NW: Well, for example Major League Baseball lowered the mound after Bob Gibson had a 1.12 ERA in 1968.
DJ: Yeah, me and Bob Gibson were a couple of bad (men).
NW: How about coining the term sack, where did that idea come from?
DJ: Football when I came into the game, linemen were last on the totem pole and there was a unique reason for that. There was no way at the time to identify what was good. People like you would write that Deacon Jones tackled the quarterback. There was no way of determining or naming what we did so we had to have a word that describes what we did so it would fit into a headline. When I use the term sack, it reminds me of putting all the offensive linemen in a big bag and taking a baseball bat and beating on the bag. I just threw it out there and the press did the rest.
NW: So you wanted to find a way to qualify what makes a good defensive lineman?
DJ: It was coming up with something to make us some more money.
NW: You were never afraid to open your mouth to make a point, were you?
DJ: Absolutely. My first contract with the Rams was $7500. There was no great standout pass rusher before that. There were great football players but they were quiet. We needed somebody with a loud mouth, somebody to step forward and take a leadership role. I happened to be with three other guys who fit that package at the time and wanted to grow as a unit. I was that big mouth guy. That’s what Olsen used to call me all the time. I always used to tell those guys if you don’t like it, come and do something about it. I didn’t think anybody in that game could beat the four of us. You just throw things out there and hope something sticks. We needed to move. Our game was stagnating. It was just part of the group so we had to stand up and show we can control the game. A defensive line can control the game if you have got four guys out there who really want it, you can stop these quarterbacks even under the lousy rules they’ve got now. If you’ve got four guys who will give it all up and go after the quarterback the way you should.
NW: Physically, you clearly were able to dominate but there was more to your success than that, wasn’t there?
DJ: Absolutely. I think my hands set me apart from anybody in history. I could use my hands and I didn’t just use them to strike a blow, I used them to get off a block and then when I got off a block, I was usually in the right position to pressure the quarterback or tackle him. That’s what set me a part. There are a lot of guys out there with speed. But speed and quickness and a knowledge of how you pass rush takes a lot of work. I put in a lot of hours perfecting the way you rush the passer, singularly and doing different things with Merlin. You’ve got to have two good players with the same thing in mind. The word sack only helps identify how many of these things you got throughout the course of the year but it only represents one play. The word should be pressure because that’s what the quarterback hates the most is constant pressure. That will lead to a lot of sacks.
NW: What was that relationship like, with the Fearsome Foursome?
DJ: It’s the greatest thing. I lead with that everywhere I go in everything I do. That was probably the finest thing that happened in the course of our careers. We had a chance to play a long time together. That doesn’t happen anymore. The beauty of this whole game is perfecting your skills and to do that you need to be with players for a long time to put it all together.
NW: You weren’t exactly a high draft choice, kind of an unknown commodity. What did you think of that at the time and did that provide motivation?
DJ: It really pissed me off. I had one thing in mind, which was to make the team. When I came into the league that was the first Caucasian guy I ever played with or against. That was a whole different set of rules to apply. We had to get used to each other. Thank God I had some nice guys next to me and I didn’t have to waste no time with no garbage. We all wanted to be great football players and we all wanted to win so we all approached it the same way. That was really a big step in my life. I went to segregated schools and the first involvement in integration I had was in the pros, eating together. There was a whole set of things that had to happen when they did that made me realize I had something. I knew I could play football, I knew that when it came. It was can I play at this level? After a couple weeks of training camp, I knew that then.
NW: That’s kind of an unknown aspect to your career. That could have made your transition to the NFL extremely difficult, right?
DJ: That could have changed the whole dimension. Everything could have been the opposite if I had wasted time going through those problems or had somebody on the other side who thought a different way. We had guys who understood, paid no attention to what was going on. We all wanted to be good football players and we handled the situation the way it was. The foursome became not only a great unit on the field but we were a great unit off the field. We sang, we danced, we did anything we wanted to do as a unit. And you had to have all four of us; you couldn’t get one or two of us. Those things are the things you remember the longest. Right now, we have gotten together every year two or three times for 30 or 40 years before Lamar Lundy passed. And every time we did, it was like the first time we met each other.
NW: That’s a hard bond to break.
DJ: It was a beautiful relationship. It shows you why we played the type of football we did because we could dominate anybody, it didn’t matter who it was. I don’t care what you do, we don’t care what you do on the field, we could defeat it. The coaches didn’t bother us, we just did what we wanted to do and it always worked.
NW: That kind of goes back to that intangible idea of caring about the guy next to you. That’s necessary for success, isn’t it?
DJ: I guarantee that. You are on the line; you want your line to be the best. This league will break your neck if you are the only one rushing the passer. You have to do different things at different times to get that pressure. Constant pressure coming at you on every down, that’s what we were known for. We came from whistle to gun.
NW: How do you account for your longevity considering the violent nature of your position and the game?
DJ: I played 143 straight games and the only reason I missed the games I did was because I didn’t particularly like the coach I was playing for at the time and I was not going to sacrifice my body for him. It played heavy in my situation because I wanted the enemy to know that at 1:05 every Sunday, I am going to be here. There was no injury or anything that would keep me away and I lived on that.
NW: Still, it’s pretty amazing that you almost never missed a game.
DJ: That way those hangnail injuries you pay no attention to it. You play a game where there is contact on every play and there won’t be one minute of the game that doesn’t hurt. If you fall victim to the hurt you will always have some kind of problem. But when 1:05 rolls around you have got Deacon. And each time that ball is snapped I am going to raise the level of play and I am coming at you and I am going to beat on your head, both sides of it.
NW: How many sacks do you think you had in your career after looking back?
DJ: 180.5. I had 26 in 1967, 68 I had 24. That’s 50 sacks back to back. I dare anybody to come close to that.
NW: Those two seasons, what set you apart? How were you able to take it to that next level?
DJ: I was playing damn good football from 1960-1964. The numbers during that period all the way up until 1970, the numbers grew each year. When I came to grips with what I was doing on the field and I was doing it through reactions, not giving a thought, my hand would automatically go upside your head. Every play, run or pass, that was automatic. When it became automatic, I became a football player. I already had the tenacity and desire. I was already running that 40 in 4.4 or 4.5 seconds and I could run all day because my conditioning was superb. That’s why I have got my knees today. I never had a scratch other than some rug burns on that Astroturf.
NW: Is that one of those deals where it feels like everything is in slow motion around you but you’re in fast forward?
DJ: It kind of looked like that. I don’t know if I would say that but it sure looked like that. I came full tilt on every down. I didn’t care whether we were 30 points up or down I am coming at you fill speed on every down and I had three guys next to me that felt the same way.
NW: What do you think your legacy in this game is?
DJ: I am proud of the fact that my style was copied. Until they outlawed the head slap, the whole league was using it. I am very proud of that. I am very proud that I played the kind of ball that inspired young people even today, even these young boys now that never saw me play but they heard about it, I have great conversations with them. Bruce Smith, Michael Strahan, and the guys that come up now. I always hang around the game in some capacity. I like to be around the guys. I like to hear their questions and hear them talk about what they have never seen. I tell them all they better be glad the rules have changed. Those big old fat offensive linemen right now, they would catch a cold.
NW: You never hesitated to let your opponents know what was coming did you?
DJ: Being the vocal guy that I was, I loved telling the guy across from me exactly what I was going to do to him. I used to upset my three compadres that I would open my mouth. I would say if he can’t beat me normally, how is he going to beat me mad? That was my theory. You can’t whup my (butt) mad and I don’t care anyway because I’m better than you are. I am going to whip you when the time comes and that’s just the way it is. You can take that and go home with that and get pissed off with that. You can go to the Pope and ask him to give you some help. I’m the only one that will decide your fate.
NW: Did you treat rookies on the other side worse than others?
DJ: If you had an R by your name he is going to get an (butt) whupping. I didn’t care if it was a rookie or not. I am going to whip the rookie or the vet. If you come at me with one man, you have got a problem. You could not block the four of us with one man. One of the prettiest things I remember about our group was the Vikings used to put 10 men on the line and send out one receiver. That made us proud because we didn’t blitz anybody. We blitz on running downs. We felt pride and we would get mad at the coach if he would blitz because we are supposed to provide the pressure. That is what every team in this league, that’s what they should adopt.
NW: That’s pretty amazing that you never had to play the run.
DJ: You can go back and look at any film and you will find me pressuring the passer. We reacted to the run. If you think you will beat us running you are dreaming. When you have got four guys up front that can come off the football with great speed and pursue both sidelines, we get in the lanes and we were big, when you fill those lanes up, where will you run? We played the pass every down and stopped the run automatically. We didn’t play no run, if you figured on beating us with the run you were dreaming and that goes to Jim Brown and anyone that came at us.
Tue. Sept. 22, 2009
By Nick Wagoner
Senior Writer
After a long fight to get him to open up a little bit, I had the good fortune of sitting down recently and having a long conversation with Hall of Fame Ram Deacon Jones.
Of course, I’m kidding about getting him to open up. Here’s the tranScript from that interview as we head toward a very special week for Jones.
The Rams will retire his No. 75 on Sunday in a pre-game ceremony.
NW: What was your first reaction when you first found out the Rams were going to retire your number?
DJ: That was the day I got out of the hospital from two major surgeries and I was feeling really (awful) that day. That really lifted my spirits. I have got to admit. It was the last thing on my mind was that information. I was sitting in the living room and I was really sick and really hurting and I got the call and it really lifted my spirits. I had a much better day. I was totally surprised. They caught me off guard, there’s no doubt about it. It wasn’t what I had on my mind. I was so delighted and happy. My whole family is.
NW: So the timing couldn’t have been better?
DJ: I have been waiting on it and they picked the right time to call me because that’s when I needed it. It frightened me. They say these things happen for a reason, that seemed like it was just perfect. It didn’t matter that it was 35 years it just mattered that it happened and it happened at a good time.
NW: You’ve been honored in many ways, what do you think will be going through your mind when you see that No. 75 raised to the rafters?
DJ: That’s always difficult to deal with. I’m a highly emotional person and I appreciate these things. I always did and I worked my ass off to try to get them. I will be a happy man, I know that. It will be a day to remember. It will be nice.
NW: What are you up to these days?
DJ: I haven’t been doing much. When I hit 65, I retired man. I just do what I want to do and when the best opportunity comes along, I handle it. Until I got sick, I do my foundation work and working with kids is always fun. You do those things and try to pick and choose and pick the best thing you can get the most out of.
NW: How are you feeling now?
DJ: My health is real good. I caught the thing very early and I had them fixed. I am just recuperating now and working out every morning. I have been doing that the last six weeks. I feel a lot better. I’m not quite there yet but I’m getting there.
NW: How close do you still follow football? Is it still a big part of your life?
DJ: Oh yeah. I was born to do that. That will always be a part of my life. I love watching the game, I love watching it being played properly. I am still (complaining) and moaning about the rule changes and giving the quarterbacks all the advantages. I dislike that and I dislike the rules being changed. The game is being played a little softer. I sit here and gripe about that every Sunday.
NW: Tell me about the origin of your signature move, the head slap?
DJ: It was a move they couldn’t block. It was as simple as that. If you had quick hands and a feel for pass rushing, you have got to be able to get off blocks and react. When I came into the league in 1961, in 1962 Merlin Olsen came along, my game and Rosey and Lamar Lundy was already there. When we got together we seemed to have been one of those blessed groups. We knew the direction we wanted to go in and we know the talent we had there. It was a joy going with those guys. It takes four men to rush the passer. You can’t do it by yourself and I was just blessed to have three other guys that were just fantastic. I owe everything to them. We grew together as a unit and out of things like that comes working on different moves and you find things in practice. I did not invent the head slap but Rembrandt didn’t invent painting either. I perfected it. I had those quick hands and quick feet. I had that knack to get off a block real quick and that usage of my hands came into play. As I perfected and grew with that move beating on dummies, I just transferred that to the regular people.
NW: Not many athletes can say they have been the direct reason a sport has had to change its rules. You are one of them.
DJ: Who else can say that?
NW: Well, for example Major League Baseball lowered the mound after Bob Gibson had a 1.12 ERA in 1968.
DJ: Yeah, me and Bob Gibson were a couple of bad (men).
NW: How about coining the term sack, where did that idea come from?
DJ: Football when I came into the game, linemen were last on the totem pole and there was a unique reason for that. There was no way at the time to identify what was good. People like you would write that Deacon Jones tackled the quarterback. There was no way of determining or naming what we did so we had to have a word that describes what we did so it would fit into a headline. When I use the term sack, it reminds me of putting all the offensive linemen in a big bag and taking a baseball bat and beating on the bag. I just threw it out there and the press did the rest.
NW: So you wanted to find a way to qualify what makes a good defensive lineman?
DJ: It was coming up with something to make us some more money.
NW: You were never afraid to open your mouth to make a point, were you?
DJ: Absolutely. My first contract with the Rams was $7500. There was no great standout pass rusher before that. There were great football players but they were quiet. We needed somebody with a loud mouth, somebody to step forward and take a leadership role. I happened to be with three other guys who fit that package at the time and wanted to grow as a unit. I was that big mouth guy. That’s what Olsen used to call me all the time. I always used to tell those guys if you don’t like it, come and do something about it. I didn’t think anybody in that game could beat the four of us. You just throw things out there and hope something sticks. We needed to move. Our game was stagnating. It was just part of the group so we had to stand up and show we can control the game. A defensive line can control the game if you have got four guys out there who really want it, you can stop these quarterbacks even under the lousy rules they’ve got now. If you’ve got four guys who will give it all up and go after the quarterback the way you should.
NW: Physically, you clearly were able to dominate but there was more to your success than that, wasn’t there?
DJ: Absolutely. I think my hands set me apart from anybody in history. I could use my hands and I didn’t just use them to strike a blow, I used them to get off a block and then when I got off a block, I was usually in the right position to pressure the quarterback or tackle him. That’s what set me a part. There are a lot of guys out there with speed. But speed and quickness and a knowledge of how you pass rush takes a lot of work. I put in a lot of hours perfecting the way you rush the passer, singularly and doing different things with Merlin. You’ve got to have two good players with the same thing in mind. The word sack only helps identify how many of these things you got throughout the course of the year but it only represents one play. The word should be pressure because that’s what the quarterback hates the most is constant pressure. That will lead to a lot of sacks.
NW: What was that relationship like, with the Fearsome Foursome?
DJ: It’s the greatest thing. I lead with that everywhere I go in everything I do. That was probably the finest thing that happened in the course of our careers. We had a chance to play a long time together. That doesn’t happen anymore. The beauty of this whole game is perfecting your skills and to do that you need to be with players for a long time to put it all together.
NW: You weren’t exactly a high draft choice, kind of an unknown commodity. What did you think of that at the time and did that provide motivation?
DJ: It really pissed me off. I had one thing in mind, which was to make the team. When I came into the league that was the first Caucasian guy I ever played with or against. That was a whole different set of rules to apply. We had to get used to each other. Thank God I had some nice guys next to me and I didn’t have to waste no time with no garbage. We all wanted to be great football players and we all wanted to win so we all approached it the same way. That was really a big step in my life. I went to segregated schools and the first involvement in integration I had was in the pros, eating together. There was a whole set of things that had to happen when they did that made me realize I had something. I knew I could play football, I knew that when it came. It was can I play at this level? After a couple weeks of training camp, I knew that then.
NW: That’s kind of an unknown aspect to your career. That could have made your transition to the NFL extremely difficult, right?
DJ: That could have changed the whole dimension. Everything could have been the opposite if I had wasted time going through those problems or had somebody on the other side who thought a different way. We had guys who understood, paid no attention to what was going on. We all wanted to be good football players and we handled the situation the way it was. The foursome became not only a great unit on the field but we were a great unit off the field. We sang, we danced, we did anything we wanted to do as a unit. And you had to have all four of us; you couldn’t get one or two of us. Those things are the things you remember the longest. Right now, we have gotten together every year two or three times for 30 or 40 years before Lamar Lundy passed. And every time we did, it was like the first time we met each other.
NW: That’s a hard bond to break.
DJ: It was a beautiful relationship. It shows you why we played the type of football we did because we could dominate anybody, it didn’t matter who it was. I don’t care what you do, we don’t care what you do on the field, we could defeat it. The coaches didn’t bother us, we just did what we wanted to do and it always worked.
NW: That kind of goes back to that intangible idea of caring about the guy next to you. That’s necessary for success, isn’t it?
DJ: I guarantee that. You are on the line; you want your line to be the best. This league will break your neck if you are the only one rushing the passer. You have to do different things at different times to get that pressure. Constant pressure coming at you on every down, that’s what we were known for. We came from whistle to gun.
NW: How do you account for your longevity considering the violent nature of your position and the game?
DJ: I played 143 straight games and the only reason I missed the games I did was because I didn’t particularly like the coach I was playing for at the time and I was not going to sacrifice my body for him. It played heavy in my situation because I wanted the enemy to know that at 1:05 every Sunday, I am going to be here. There was no injury or anything that would keep me away and I lived on that.
NW: Still, it’s pretty amazing that you almost never missed a game.
DJ: That way those hangnail injuries you pay no attention to it. You play a game where there is contact on every play and there won’t be one minute of the game that doesn’t hurt. If you fall victim to the hurt you will always have some kind of problem. But when 1:05 rolls around you have got Deacon. And each time that ball is snapped I am going to raise the level of play and I am coming at you and I am going to beat on your head, both sides of it.
NW: How many sacks do you think you had in your career after looking back?
DJ: 180.5. I had 26 in 1967, 68 I had 24. That’s 50 sacks back to back. I dare anybody to come close to that.
NW: Those two seasons, what set you apart? How were you able to take it to that next level?
DJ: I was playing damn good football from 1960-1964. The numbers during that period all the way up until 1970, the numbers grew each year. When I came to grips with what I was doing on the field and I was doing it through reactions, not giving a thought, my hand would automatically go upside your head. Every play, run or pass, that was automatic. When it became automatic, I became a football player. I already had the tenacity and desire. I was already running that 40 in 4.4 or 4.5 seconds and I could run all day because my conditioning was superb. That’s why I have got my knees today. I never had a scratch other than some rug burns on that Astroturf.
NW: Is that one of those deals where it feels like everything is in slow motion around you but you’re in fast forward?
DJ: It kind of looked like that. I don’t know if I would say that but it sure looked like that. I came full tilt on every down. I didn’t care whether we were 30 points up or down I am coming at you fill speed on every down and I had three guys next to me that felt the same way.
NW: What do you think your legacy in this game is?
DJ: I am proud of the fact that my style was copied. Until they outlawed the head slap, the whole league was using it. I am very proud of that. I am very proud that I played the kind of ball that inspired young people even today, even these young boys now that never saw me play but they heard about it, I have great conversations with them. Bruce Smith, Michael Strahan, and the guys that come up now. I always hang around the game in some capacity. I like to be around the guys. I like to hear their questions and hear them talk about what they have never seen. I tell them all they better be glad the rules have changed. Those big old fat offensive linemen right now, they would catch a cold.
NW: You never hesitated to let your opponents know what was coming did you?
DJ: Being the vocal guy that I was, I loved telling the guy across from me exactly what I was going to do to him. I used to upset my three compadres that I would open my mouth. I would say if he can’t beat me normally, how is he going to beat me mad? That was my theory. You can’t whup my (butt) mad and I don’t care anyway because I’m better than you are. I am going to whip you when the time comes and that’s just the way it is. You can take that and go home with that and get pissed off with that. You can go to the Pope and ask him to give you some help. I’m the only one that will decide your fate.
NW: Did you treat rookies on the other side worse than others?
DJ: If you had an R by your name he is going to get an (butt) whupping. I didn’t care if it was a rookie or not. I am going to whip the rookie or the vet. If you come at me with one man, you have got a problem. You could not block the four of us with one man. One of the prettiest things I remember about our group was the Vikings used to put 10 men on the line and send out one receiver. That made us proud because we didn’t blitz anybody. We blitz on running downs. We felt pride and we would get mad at the coach if he would blitz because we are supposed to provide the pressure. That is what every team in this league, that’s what they should adopt.
NW: That’s pretty amazing that you never had to play the run.
DJ: You can go back and look at any film and you will find me pressuring the passer. We reacted to the run. If you think you will beat us running you are dreaming. When you have got four guys up front that can come off the football with great speed and pursue both sidelines, we get in the lanes and we were big, when you fill those lanes up, where will you run? We played the pass every down and stopped the run automatically. We didn’t play no run, if you figured on beating us with the run you were dreaming and that goes to Jim Brown and anyone that came at us.
- - - - - - - No. 75, HOF ... 
... 6'-5", 275 lbs. of pure attack, head slap and sack! PS: Rams official site actually has a nice intro page right now on the Deacon, with soul music of the era and all. ;)
Deacon's other good buddies from the famed Fearsome quartet. 
Good Stuff!
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