ENGLEWOOD, Colorado – Two-time Super Bowl champion Tony Jones passed away,
Jones, a 13-year-old NFL veteran, played four seasons for the Broncos in the 1997-2000 tackle. He served as the team’s right tackle during his first world championship season in 1997 and held the future Hall of Famer Reggie White without a sack in Super Bowl XXXII. Jones then took up the left tackle position in 1998, when Denver won another title. Jones won Pro Bowl prizes that season for protecting John Elway’s blind side.
The six-foot-five-foot-tall player began all 60 games he played in his four seasons in Denver. Jones joined the Browns as a non-hired player in 1988 and spent eight seasons in Cleveland. Jones was a second team All-Pro in 1994.
Jones then spent the 1996 season with the Ravens before the Broncos negotiated a second-round choice to acquire it in February 1997.
Born in Royston, Georgia, Jones was named a member of the Broncos Top 100 Team in 2019. The list of players celebrated the best of all time in the franchise and was voted on by fans.
DenverBroncos.com also ranked Jones as the fourth best tackle in the team’s history in 2016.
“We lost a great man,” Ring of Fame wide receiver Rod Smith posted on Instagram on Friday. “It turns out he’s a hell of a playa. We love you and miss you, Bone. One of the best tackles of all time in the Broncos. The greatest dresser of ALL TIME!”
The three-time All-Pro tackle, Willie Anderson also remembered Jones, calling him on Twitter “a great father, friend, offensive tackle, coach and trainer”.
Steve Atwater, of the Professional Football Hall of Fame, was also close to Jones, as the two lived close together after their NFL careers.
“He was an amazing guy, a really nice guy,” said Atwater. “Great football player – I mean, nasty. That’s the kind of guy you want to go to war with if you go to war. And we were really good friends. We lived in the same neighborhood when we lived in Georgia – we lived down there in Pão de Açúcar We had a very good friendship … He and another friend of mine, we had lunch just before I moved from Atlanta, took me to lunch. I always remember how nice he was, how great he was with your kids. A good guy, man. “