None of the others worked out, because running fast and catching a football are 2 very different skills. And the myth of the great sprinter as a great receiver ended with Lam Jones. Unfortunately for people around here, the New York Jets bore the brunt of that.
John Wesley Jones was born on April 4, 1958 in Lawton, Oklahoma, and grew up in Lampassas in Central Texas. In 1976, he was part of the U.S. team that won the Gold Medal in the 4-by-100-meter relay at the Olympics in Montreal. He was just 18, making him the youngest athlete from Texas ever to make an Olympic team. The other 3 runners were Harvey Glance, Millard Hampton and Steve Riddick.
Glance, of Auburn University, remained a top sprinter well into the 1980s, although he never won another Olympic medal, and became a track coach. Hampton, of UCLA, also won the Silver Medal in the 200 meters, behind Don Quarrie of Jamaica. Riddick, of Norfolk State, later won a Gold Medal in the 1979 Pan American games, and went into coaching, but served time in prison for fraud.
All 3 are still alive -- and none of the 3 was drafted by a pro football team, nor did any of them play pro football, not in the NFL, not in the CFL, not in the USFL as was possible at the time.
Of course, none of them played college football, either. Jones did, at one of the great football programs, the University of Texas, and made the All-Southwest Conference Team as a receiver in 1978 and 1979. Between his football and track achievements, he was elected to the Texas Athletics Hall of Honor.
There was another Johnny Jones on the team, so head coach Fred Akers nicknamed him then after their hometowns: The one from Hamlin, Texas became "Ham Jones," and the one from Lampassas became "Lam Jones."
*
In 1980, the Jets had the 2nd pick in the NFL Draft, having traded 2 picks to the San Francisco 49ers to get it. The 1st pick belonged to the Detroit Lions, who had finished 2-14 the year before, and took Billy Sims, the 1978 Heisman Trophy winner from the University of Oklahoma. He had a great 1st 4 seasons in the NFL, before wrecking his knee in his 5th season and never playing again. But the Jets didn't have a chance at him anyway.
Here are some of the offensive players who went later in that draft, that the Jets could have taken: Quarterback Marc Wilson; running backs Charles White (the 1979 Heisman winner), Curtis Dickey, Joe Cribbs and Vagas Ferguson; tight end Junior Miller; centers Dwight Stephenson (a future Hall-of-Famer) and Jim Ritcher (holder of the Outland Trophy), guard Brad Budde, tackle Stan Brock, and placekicker Eddie Murray -- and, perhaps most damningly for the Jets, a Hall of Fame receiver in Art Monk.
Here are some of the defensive players who went later in that draft, that the Jets could have taken: Tackles Bruce Clark and Steve McMichael; ends Jacob Green and Rulon Jones; linebackers Otis Wilson, Keena Turner, Matt Millen and Larry McGrew; and cornerbacks Mark Haynes and Don McNeal. To their credit, the Jets did draft Penn State linebacker Lance Mehl in the 3rd round.
The Jets had hoped to use the 2nd pick in the draft on USC offensive tackle Anthony Munoz. But Munoz had undergone reconstructive knee surgery. Dr. James A. Nicholas, an orthopedist who was then serving as the Jets' team doctor, knew this, and warned them off Munoz. Munoz was then taken by the Cincinnati Bengals with the 3rd pick, and went on to become the greatest player in franchise history, helping them reach 2 Super Bowls, and possible the best offensive tackle who ever lived.
So the Jets' brass, led by team owner Leon Hess, general manager Jim Kensil and head coach Walt Michaels, decided that the best receiver in the draft was Lam Jones. They went for a receiver despite already having Wesley Walker and Derrick Gaffney, and tight end Mickey Shuler. They gave Jones $250,000 signing bonus, a $300,000 deferred bonus, and a $200,000 loan.
In 1980, the Jets went 4-12. Jones played in all 16 games, starting 13, and caught 25 passes for 482 yards and 3 touchdowns. Clearly, he wasn't part of the problem: This was a decent rookie year. In 1981, the Jets rebounded, going 10-5-1 to finish 2nd in the AFC Eastern Division. It was the 1st season ever in which both the Jets and the New York Giants made the Playoffs. Jones caught 20 passes for 342 yards and 3 touchdowns.
But, already a pattern was emerging. It wasn't the passes that Jones caught that caught people's attention, it was the passes he dropped. People began to say things like, "He's an athlete, but he's not a football player."
In the strike-shortened 1982 season, the Jets went 6-3, and 2 of the losses were to the Miami Dolphins -- although 1 was a mere 20-19 loss at the Orange Bowl. That gave them hope. Freeman McNeil was the NFL's leading rusher, and their defensive line of Joe Klecko, Mark Gastineau, Marty Lyons and Abdul Salaam, plus linebackers Mehl and Greg Buttle, became known as the New York Sack Exchange. Walker and Shuler had good seasons catching passes from quarterback Richard Todd, and Jones caught 18 passes for 294 yards and 2 touchdowns in what amounted to half a season.
The Jets clobbered the Bengals in Cincinnati, and then stunned the Raiders at the Los Angeles Coliseum to reach the AFC Championship Game, against the Dolphins, at the Orange Bowl. And the game was scoreless at the half. They were 30 minutes from the Super Bowl -- just as they would be in 1998. But, as happened that time, it was not to be: In a game known as the Mud Bowl, the Dolphins squished out with a 14-0 win. It would be 16 years before the Jets would get that close again.
The Jets were unable to follow this up, going 7-9 in each of the next 2 seasons. In 1983, Jones caught 43 passes for 734 yards and 4 touchdowns, his best season yet. But he was hurt for the 1st half of the 1984 season, and finished with 32 catches for 470 yards and just 1 touchdown.
He was 26 years old, and already had 138 career catches for 2,322 yards and 13 touchdowns. Granted, for a good receiver today, that's 2 seasons' worth, not 5 as Jones had.
But he had already played 5 seasons, made the Playoffs twice, and gotten close to a Super Bowl. If that had been the 1st half of his career, that wouldn't have been bad at all.
The problem was, he never had a 2nd half to his career. In preseason practice in 1985, he hurt a finger, a big problem for a receiver, and was lost for the season. In 1986, he got hurt in preseason again, a hamstring injury, a big problem for someone who depends on running speed, and again missed the entire season.
In preseason 1987, the Jets traded him -- ironically, to the team they got his draft pick from the 49ers. Dwight Clark had retired, and the Niners were looking for a 2nd receiver alongside Jerry Rice. Jones wasn't it, and they released him after just 18 days. A week after that, desperate for healthy receivers, the Dallas Cowboys brought him in, but he didn't get into a game, and was released in October.
"I know how they remember me in New York: I'm the guy they blew the draft pick on," he said in a 2005 interview with the New York Daily News. "That's OK. I didn't live up to their expectations, but I didn't live up to my own expectations, either."
Part of the problem was substance abuse. Jones became an alcoholic and a cocaine addict. And New York was really the wrong market for someone with those problems, as too many other athletes found out in the 1980s.
"I wasn't ready for New York," he later admitted. "I was a small-town kid who succumbed to the trappings of celebrity."
In 1988, he was arrested on what once would have been quaintly called "a morals charge," and was sent to rehab as part of a plea agreement.
Once painfully shy, he became a motivational speaker, talking to high school athletes about the pitfalls he faced, donating part of his speaking fees, as well as his Gold Medal, to the Texas Special Olympics. He seemed to have found a happy ending.
UPDATE: He was buried at the Texas State Cemetery in Austin.
*
Why did the Jets draft him? They already had Wesley Walker, Derrick Gaffney and Mickey Shuler. Did they really need another good pass-catcher? Which he did not turn out to be? Was drafting him a mistake, or not?
Top 5 Reasons You Can't Blame the Jets for Drafting Johnny "Lam" Jones
5. Bob Hayes. All it really took was one example to make everyone want to try to find another. But none other was ever found. The closest any later track star came to becoming an NFL star was Renaldo Nehemiah, a native of Scotch Plains, Union County, New Jersey, and he was a hurdler, not a sprinter. He did, however, help the San Francisco 49ers win Super Bowl XIX.
4. The Defense. They didn't need linemen, with Joe Klecko, Mark Gastineau, Marty Lyons and Abdul Salaam. They didn't need linebackers, with Greg Buttle and Lance Mehl. They were a little short at defensive back, but it wasn't a great draft there, with the 1st 2 cornerbacks chosen being Mark Haynes and Don McNeal, and the 1st 2 safeties chosen being Roland James and Johnnie Johnson. So defense didn't have to be a priority.
3. The Rest of the Offense. The Jets had Richard Todd at quarterback. They didn't yet have Freeman McNeil at running back, but they did have Bruce Harper and Scott Dierking. They had a decent line, led by Joe Fields at center and Marvin Powell at tackle. So they decided to go with an already-old NFL strategy:
2. "The Best Available Athlete." Lam Jones was a 2-sport star. But this should have been irrelevant. As I said, running fast and catching a well-thrown football are 2 different skills. Most of the guys who can do both at the same time might have been high school track stars, but not college track stars, because they would have been told by their football coaches to focus on football and forget about track. (There have been exceptions, including Heisman Trophy winner Herschel Walker, but he was a running back, so he isn't exactly the exception to the rule.)
In addition, while dual-sport athletes have been drafted by NFL teams before, it usually doesn't work. Baseball skills are almost totally different from football skills. Same with basketball skills: A few basketball players have been drafted by NFL teams -- including John Havlicek, the future Boston Celtics star then with Ohio State, by the Cleveland Browns in 1962 -- but that's always been because of their size, especially their height, and no one has ever played in both the NFL and the NBA. (The NFL and MLB, yes; the NBA and MLB, yes; the NFL and the NBA, no. The suggestion that LeBron James would play for the Cleveland Browns was, at best, a publicity stunt; and, at worst, a joke.)
Besides, some of the best pro receivers weren't big prospects coming out of college. Art Monk was also chosen in the 1st round in 1980, and he became, for a time, the NFL's all-time receptions leader. But he wasn't a nationally-heralded star at Syracuse University.
1. Dr. James Nicholas. Had the Jets' team doctor not been an orthopedist, or hadn't practically panicked over Anthony Munoz and his already-rebuilt knee, the Jets might have drafted him, giving Richard Todd and Freeman McNeil the best blocker they would ever have.
Given that the Dolphins only scored 14 points in that AFC Championship Game, having Munoz might have made the difference for the Jets. Maybe the surviving '82 Jets can sue Nicholas for malpractice.
VERDICT: Guilty. I'm afraid so: The Jets still had to decide whether to listen to Nicholas. Unlike the Yankees, the only MLB team not scared off by Joe DiMaggio's 1934 Pacific Coast League knee injury, the Jets panicked, taking Lam instead of Munoz.
His former receiving partner, Wesley Walker, said today, "I just know he had the attributes and all the talent, and it just wasn't developed. I just wish he had accomplished certain things that I knew he could as an athlete.
"Lam was a very good person on top of everything. Even after all the things that happened to him recently, he was always upbeat, he never complained, he just explained the things he went through. I loved him as a person."
No comments:
Post a Comment