ENGLEWOOD, Colorado – Tony Jones, first team of two of the Denver Broncos championship teams, is dead, the team announced Friday. He was 54 years old.
Jones, who started playing right-handed in the Broncos ’victory in Super Bowl XXXII and started playing left-handed when the team won Super Bowl XXXIII the following year, played 13 seasons in the NFL with the Cleveland Browns, Baltimore Ravens and Broncos after entering the league as an unrecruited rookie in 1988.
Known as “T-Bone” by his Broncos teammates, he spent the last four years of his career with the Broncos, retiring after starting 16 games in the 2000 season at the age of 34.
“We’ve lost a great man,” ex-partner Rod Rod posted on Twitter. “It was just a beach of hellish balls. We love you and we miss you Bone. One of the best Broncos attacks of all time. The best locker room of ALL TIME!”
Ed McCaffrey, another former Broncos teammate, called Jones “a great teammate and a wonderful man,” and the famous Steve Atwater, who also played on those two Super Bowl teams, said Jones was a great teammate “with” only the most beautiful children. “
Atwater also said Friday night that many of the players on those Broncos teams have continued to keep in touch with each other and that “everyone is hurting in this.”
The Broncos, believing they were about to bounce back from the playoff loss to the Jacksonville Jaguars to end the 1996 season, switched a second-round pick to the Ravens in 1997 to acquire Jones.
In Super Bowl XXXII, on the right, he kept the Reggie White Hall of Fame without a sack and in overall attack, as the Broncos ran 179 yards and the Hall of Famer Terrell Davis was named game MVP.
After Gary Zimmerman, also a Hall of Famer, retired before the 1998 season, Jones moved to the left wing and started every game on the road to a Pro Bowl selection as the Broncos won a second title. consecutive.
Jones was named a member of the Broncos ’Top 100 team in 2019.
In a post on social media, former Bengals striker Willie Anderson told Jones “a great father, friend, offensive attack, coach and coach.”