This Was Just a Guy Named Jones : Then Earl Leggett Created Another Monster for Raiders

How to become a Raider defensive lineman:

You should contrive to be born somewhere that isn’t a football hotbed. Sean Jones was born in Kingston, Jamaica. Enough said.

You should grow to a huge size, but not too quickly, lest everyone find out about you. Another A for Jones, who was 6 feet and 185 pounds when he started his senior year in high school in Montclair, N.J., and is 6-7, 265 now.

You should attend a college where football is one notch above a club sport. Jones is from Northeastern a co-op school in Boston, which makes Howie Long’s Villanova look big time and Bill Pickel’s Rutgers look like Oklahoma.

You should have a name that looks good in italics, so that when the Raiders draft you at some never-dreamed-of level, everyone can say “Sean Jones?”

The Raiders took Jones in the second round in 1984 and 27 NFL personnel directors went back into the film room to find out if they were crazy.

Was there any way that Sean Jones could have missed? He has size, speed, personality, humble beginnings and a mean streak as wide as the San Diego Freeway.

He didn’t miss. He was still being described as a project late last season when Lyle Alzado was hurt and he became the starter. He had six sacks in the last four games and one more in the playoff loss to the New England Patriots. For Jones, a three-year man at 23, the future is now.

“Sean was just a pup,” says defensive line coach Earl Leggett. “He was 21 when we got him. He was just like a big kid.

“I would compare him to Howie, for being raw. Bill had played some real major-type football and he knew some real good fundamentals. Greg Townsend (from TCU) was the same way. Sean and Howie were really raw.”

Jones was more like unformed. He was a running back in high school.

How good a running back?

“Not good enough to get a scholarship,” he said.

He enrolled at Northeastern, where students are obligated to work six months a year to earn their tuition. He worked as an accountant and a sales manager. He graduated with a degree in marketing, planning to become a stockbroker.

He had gone out for football, hoping only to get a scholarship and lighten his tuition load. After three seasons, he had his scholarship and more.

“I was getting all this stuff from the Senior Bowl, the East-West Shrine Game,” he says. “Then I got hurt and they wanted their letters back.

“I chipped a bone in my ankle and I wasn’t moving around well. My biggest assets were supposed to be size and speed. All of the scouts were saying, ‘He’s big but he’s not fast. He doesn’t look aggressive. He should be dominating at this level. He’s a stiff.’

“I started getting disillusioned again. But the Raiders came back at the end of the season when I was healthy and saw me. That’s a credit to the organization.”

There is a story a lot of Raider linemen tell, of their pre-draft workout with Leggett. As Long remembers: “He had me get in a stance, turn and come up field and that was all. I figured, ‘So much for them,’ and went back in and turned on ‘Leave it to Beaver.’ ”

Jones can beat that one.

“I’d always heard the Raiders were big, strong, rough, tough, that they threw people around,” he said. “I thought they were going to want me to take a weight test. I think back then I could bench press 250--one time.

“I wasn’t going to take any weight test. When Earl called and told me he was coming, I told him it was spring break and the Cowboys were flying me down to Dallas to work out. Shoot, the Cowboys weren’t flying me anywhere. Earl still kids me about it.”

With or without a weight test, Jones became a Raider, one of the roughest and toughest of them. At least, one of the fightingest of them.

Most remembered among his encounters was one last summer when he tore Dallas tackle Phil Pozderac’s face mask off his helmet.

“That was a scrimmage,” Jones said, laughing. “We scrimmaged them three times last year and twice this year. It’ll probably be one next year.

“I grabbed him by the face mask and it came off. I didn’t know what to do with it. I said, ‘I might as well throw it at him.’

“He looked like Jim Thorpe without it. I felt like laughing.

“We’ve got a guy like Howie. He’s got a temper. Lyle had an aggressiveness about him. Bill and I have like a mean streak. We don’t flare up as much.

“But when I do, Howie and Bill will be trying to calm me down and I’ll be like cursing them. They’ll be saying, ‘Hey, we’re on your side.’

“I don’t like to get in the paper for this sort of thing. It gets to be the only thing that ever gets mentioned. If I wanted to be a boxer, I’d have joined that HBO thing (the cable network’s heavyweight elimination series) and made some real money.”

He did kick New England’s Willie Scott last week, earning an ejection. Jones said that bad feelings between them started last season when Scott, then with the Kansas City Chiefs, clipped him so badly it made the NFL officials’ highlight film.

Jones also said that kicking Scott was “stupid” and vowed not to do it in the regular season. So maybe it shouldn’t count.

In the off-season, Jones goes back into sales for a local spa company. Anything to get away.

“Football gets me so that I don’t even speak the way I used to,” he said. “I curse every second word. I don’t read. In the off-season, I just want to rest and the next thing you know, you’re back to the same old grind. Working helps me put my degree to some use.”

It’s football season again, his first as a pro starter. Now all he wants to be is a Raider lineman, in the post-discovery phase.

“You take our group,” Jones said. “As a group, this has to be the best six football players in the league so the competition is right within the group. I don’t have to look at New York, I don’t have to look at Denver, I don’t have to look at Chicago. I know I’m going to watch these guys each week on film and I’ll be seeing the best in the league.

“You’ve got a guy like Howie. Everybody knows what he can do. A guy like Bill, the same way.

“You’ve got a guy like Greg Townsend. It’s just amazing some of the things he does. A guy like Mitch Willis. No one says much about Mitch. He doesn’t look great in practice. He probably doesn’t look great, period. But you put him in a game and he’s always around the ball. I even look at (Bob) Buczkowski and say, ‘That’s pretty good for a rook.’