This article is based on my 1992 interview with Jones.
NOTE: Tight end Brent Jones played 11 seasons for the San Francisco 49ers (1987-1997) and was a member of nine NFC championship and three Super Bowl championship teams. He helped revolutionize the concept of the pass-catching tight end.
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Brent Jones (photo, San Francisco 49ers)
The scene is January 1988. The 49ers were playing the Minnesota Vikings in the first round of the NFL playoffs. San Francisco was heavily favored to win the game, and many, including Brent Jones, expected the 49ers to go on to capture their third Super Bowl Championship.
Jones caught a pass and headed upfield. As he looked for room to run, a Minnesota defender crashed into his left knee, snapping it back. Jones went down, and he would not play again that season. Jones’s knee was so severely injured that it required reconstructive surgery.
The Vikings beat the 49ers 36-24, eliminating San Francisco from post-season play.
“I thought I was going to the Super Bowl. I couldn’t believe it,” said Jones. “I think, for the most part, people thought I’d never play again.”
Bill Walsh (photo courtesy Silver and Black Pride)
Remarkably, his knee healed in five months. But he injured his other knee at training camp, which required arthroscopic surgery. As Jones waited for his knee to heal, Bill Walsh, the 49ers’ coach at the time, delivered unwelcome news. “He said they were just going to keep two tight ends on the roster,” Jones recalled, “and it was going to be these other two guys. I wasn’t going to be around.”
But, for some strange reason, the 49ers put Jones on the injured reserve list instead of cutting him from the squad. Then, some even stranger things began to happen. Another tight end got injured, and Jones got some playing time. He did so well that he moved from third-string to second-string. After the season ended, John Frank, the 49ers’ starting tight end, announced his retirement.
Suddenly, the first-string job was up for grabs, and Jones took it, big time. Jones set single-season team records in 1991 for tight end receptions and yardage.
Ironically, Walsh, who turned to broadcasting after retiring as 49ers head coach in 1990, emphasized Jones’s importance to the team during a telecast of a 49ers game.
When Jones was out with yet another knee injury, Walsh described the impact. Most fans knew about 49ers receivers Jerry Rice and John Taylor, but many did not know that Jones, the third weapon in the team’s pass-catching arsenal, kept defenders honest because defensive backs couldn’t just key on Rice and Taylor. The record bore out Walsh’s interpretation. The 49ers started 4-5 but finished 10-6 after Jones returned to the lineup.
Jones told me his biggest thrill was catching a pass for the game’s second touchdown in San Francisco’s 55-10 victory over the Denver Broncos in Super Bowl XXIV in 1990. But his best game as a 49er came the following season, in a 19-13 win over the Atlanta Falcons. He caught five passes for a career-best 125 yards, including a 67-yard touchdown pass.
But Jones’s legacy includes more than success as a tight end. It includes multiple injuries and his uncanny ability to bounce back. For example, Jones tore a ligament in his left knee during the second game of the 1991 season against the San Diego Chargers. Doctors said it would take eight to ten weeks before he could play again. But after five weeks, Jones was cleared to play. It was the fourth time he returned to the field from a significant injury, and what stands out is his attitude during those recoveries.
Brent Jones: Many people ask, ‘How can you handle that? How can you be so upset about having a knee injury? How come you’re not down and frustrated?’ He said the answer is his faith in God. I can’t even begin to take credit for what I’ve done or been through. There’s just no way. I would have never been able to handle it. He said his faith has sustained him through adversity, especially during his recovery from injuries. Going through it, there are times of frustration, but Christ has brought me through the tough times.
Jones feels that his success as a football player is also directly related to his faith. “I think God had a plan for my life,” Jones explained. “There’s no way I could have become a professional football player had it not been for that commitment (to Christ). So many events in my life moved me to the tight end in college, put me back in San Francisco, and finally gave me my chance. I was a good athlete, but you could talk to any of my friends from high school — I was the farthest thing from a pro football player.”
Jones felt that many athletes turn to God because of the emptiness they experience amid success. “A lot of times, athletes have every everything,” he explained. “They have the fast cars, the big money, all the women, if they wanted that. And I think so many guys climb that mountain and see nothing there. They realize that money and the world’s view of success can’t buy true happiness.”
For Jones, true success is honoring God in everything he does. His faith pervades every aspect of his life, including his actions on the football field. “I play as hard as anybody out there,” he said. “That’s how Christ wants me to play.”
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This article first appeared in Teen Quest (September 1992).
