By T. Scott Boatright
As the 2024 NFL Draft was held last weekend, Dub Jones and his son Bert, both Ruston High School graduates and former pro football standouts, knew the now three-day event was happening.
They also knew it was nothing like they went through when they were both the No. 2 overall NFL draft selections — Dub being picked by the Chicago Cardinals in 1946 and Bert being drafted by the Baltimore Colts in 1973.
But while Bert immediately joined the NFL, Dub’s journey was a little different.
After graduating from Ruston High, Dub Jones, who is 99 headed toward his 100th birthday on Dec. 29, attended LSU on a scholarship for a year before being transferred to Tulane University in New Orleans as part of a World War II-era U.S. Navy training program.
He played football at Tulane for two seasons before being drafted by the NFL’s Chicago Cardinals as well as the Miami Seahawks, a team from the All-American Football Conference (AAFC), an upstart league in its first year challenging the NFL.
Another of Dub’s sons, former Louisiana Tech defensive back and former state Sen. Bill Jones, said his father opted for the AAFC.
“So, he played for the Seahawks, then he got traded to the Brooklyn Dodgers (another AAFC football team),” Bill Jones said. “Paul Brown was coach of the Browns and had seen Daddy play college ball. And after Daddy played a year for the Dodgers Brown traded the No. 1 overall pick to bring Daddy to the Browns.
“And Daddy ended up playing eight years for the Browns.”
That first year Dub was playing for Cleveland, the Browns won all of their games and the AAFC championship. The team repeated as champions in 1949, but the AAFC dissolved at the end of the year and the Browns joined the NFL.
Dub, a tall, rangy player, went to the Browns as a defensive back but moved to halfback before Paul Brown created a new position to feature Dub – flanker.
And that flanker who was both a running and receiving threat, remained a key part of Browns teams that won NFL championships in 1950, 1954 and 1955.
He was twice named to the Pro Bowl, the NFL’s all-star game, including in 1951, when he set an NFL single game touchdown record with six, a mark he now shares with the New Orleans’ Alvin Kamara along with a pair of late former standouts — Ernie Nevers and Gayle Sayers.
Dub Jones finished his NFL career with 2,210 rushing on 540 carries along with 171 receptions for 2,874 yards, totaling a combined 41 touchdowns in the process.
“There’s one record dad is a part of that I don’t know can ever be broken — it’s hard to imagine it happening,” Bert Jones said. “And that’s that the Browns played in 10 championship games in a row, which was the Super Bowl back then,”
After retiring from his playing career Dub returned to Lincoln Parish, working at a sawmill before returning to the Browns in 1963 as a coach.
And the NFL draft was still a much different event than it is today.
“When he was offensive coordinator for the Browns in the 1960s, he was working here at the lumber mill in Simsboro,” Bill Jones said. “And during the draft he would just stay by the phone at the lumber yard. It was a low-key deal. The other Browns coaches at the draft would call him and let him know who had been taken and who was still available and asked him his thoughts on who they should take. It was a lot different then.”
After leaving the coaching profession Dub returned to sawmill work in Lincoln, but also did some football consulting work, including with someone who became a longtime friend — legendary Grambling football coach Eddie Robinson.
“He brought the Cleveland Browns playbook to show Coach Rob, and that’s how Grambling went from a straight Wing-T (offense) to a Pro-Set,” Bert Jones said. “So, every year Dad would go work some with Grambling, and what’s really crazy is that when I was playing pro ball, I would go out and work out at Grambling also.
“The coaches couldn’t come out on the field, but before I would work out I would talk to Coach Rob and he’d tell me he’d like to do this or put in that offensively, and I would be out there working seven on seven with his players showing them the things I knew. There was a strong football bond that turned into friendships between the Joneses and the Robinsons.”
Dub and wife Shumpert still live in their own home and are looking forward to celebrating their 78th anniversary this summer reminiscing about their long marriage.
Just as Dub and Bert did last week, keeping up with the NFL Draft and remembering their football lives.
