Genius-in-waiting Belichick coached Davenport Central grad Jones
James Jones was there at the genesis of what could be the first 16-0 regular-season in National Football League history.
The Davenport Central grad and 10-year NFL defensive lineman can’t tell you that he saw this potentially historic New England Patriots season coming when he and a rookie head coach named Bill Belichick arrived in Cleveland in 1991.
“I have always felt that he would win,” Jones said of Belichick, the now-veteran NFL head man whose 2007 Patriots have a chance on Saturday in New York to complete the first unbeaten NFL regular season since Miami went 14-0 in 1972.
Belichick and Jones didn’t win early in Cleveland, where they went 20-28 over their first three seasons before reaching the playoffs in 1994.“Then the next year, he kind of blew up the team,” said Jones, who left through free agency in ’94 and was one of several veteran Browns players who couldn’t always make sense of Belichick’s brusk and imperious manner.
“More than anything, the way he handled the situation didn’t sit well with some guys on the team,” Jones said.
There was no doubt even then, though, that the early incarnation of a future genius head coach knew the NFL game. Belichick, after all, had spent 16 years as a professional assistant, six as the defensive coordinator of Bill Parcells’ New York Giants, who won Super Bowls in 1986 and 1990.
Belichick, though, did have to grow on the job, even returning to Parcells’ side as a New England and New York Jets assistant for four seasons after being fired from Cleveland with a 36-44 record in 1995.
Jones said he was told by Anthony Pleasant, a former Browns teammate who followed Belichick to New York and then New England, that the driven head coach had learned through the years to deal more evenly with his players.
“He played on two Super Bowl championships with the Patriots and he said Bill’s interaction with the players was better,” Jones said. “It was a maturing process.”
Jones even saw some of evidence of that growth in the late stages of his own career. He said he tried to greet Belichick after a blowout Patriots’ loss to Jones’ Detroit Lions.
“He was in a bad mood and just basically shrugged me off,” Jones recalled.
A bit later that same day, though, “He came out to the (Lions’ team) bus and said ‘Hey JJ, how are you doing?’ He congratulated me on how I was playing, and he basically was saying ‘I should have acknowledged you before. I just was in a bad mood.’
“Whereas 10 years before, it didn’t really matter what anyone else thought.”
Jones said he thinks Belichick’s ability to communicate with players is what has completed his transition into perhaps the best head coach in all of pro sports.
“I think the biggest thing is he is just straight forward, honest and real with them,” said Jones, who retired in 2000 and now is living with his wife SonJa and daughter Morgan in Kansas City. “If he is wrong, he acknowledges he’s wrong and moves forward from there.”
Belichick, whose Patriots won Super Bowls in 2001, 2003 and 2004, has gone forward with the help of handful of people he first recruited in Cleveland.
Scott Pioli, the vice-president of player personnel who has helped assemble and retain the bulk of the New England dynasty, was an unpaid gopher in Jones’ first seasons with the Browns.
Eric Mangini, now the head coach of the Jets but a member of the Pats’ early Super Bowl-winning coaching staffs, worked as a Cleveland ball boy in ‘91 and had to borrow Jones’ car to get to and from the Cleveland training facility.
Jones said both were primary beneficiaries of Belichick’s show-me approach.
“That’s one thing Bill was always about,” he said. “‘If you do the work, I’m going to give you a shot.’
“That’s the same thing with players. If you look at what (the Patriots) have. They are smart and they are versatile. They may not jump off the board as far as being the most athletic guys, but he and Scott work well together as far as what type of players they want. Young or old, it doesn’t matter. Do you fit what we are going to do?”
Chiefly, the Pats want winners. And winning, Jones said, breeds winners, even from reputed malcontents like Pro Bowl receiver Randy Moss.
Bottom line: Jones is not surprised at his former coach’s litany of success.
But the possibility of an unbeaten season? In the NFL? Yeah, he said, that’s surprising.
“It’s hard enough just to win one game,” he said. “They have got talented players but to win 16 games? That’s tough.”
The goal, of course, is to win 19, Super Bowl XLII included.
“I think they can,’’ Jones said. “I don’t see why not. There’s no question they can. Now, will it be done? I don’t know. They always say any given Sunday ...”
Even for a team and coach for which Sundays have become a given.
Craig DeVrieze can be contacted at (563) 333-2610 or cdevrieze@qctimes.com. Comment on this story at qctimes.com