Former NFL defensive end Ed “Too Tall” Jones played 15 years for the Dallas Cowboys. He believes that, if he’d been playing now, his career would have been even longer.
“Randy White and I joke about it all the time, that we’d be playing now if they had what I call situational players,” Jones told JoeBucsFan.com. “I played every down. . . . Now guys before the game know that they’ll play 25 run plays or 15 passing plays. And I’m going, ‘I would have played forever.’ . . . The way they play now, they’re keeping everybody fresh. It’s working. The game’s changed.”
Actually, Jones could have played longer than 15 years under the old approach, too. He “retired” after the 1978 season to become a boxer. After missing all of 1979 to pursue his passion, he returned, playing for the Cowboys from 1980 through 1989, and qualifying for three Pro Bowls during that stretch.
Finally, our research on Jones requires us to amend a recent comment we made about Gary Coleman. As it turns out, his connection to football wasn’t only the episode in which Mr. Drummond shelled out for uniforms in order to buy a spot on the team for the character Coleman played. Jones also appeared on an episode of Diff’rent Strokes, using his long arms to get Coleman off of a ledge at their apartment building.
