Dub Jones, a Cleveland Browns star who owns a share of the NFL record for touchdowns in a game, has died just a month shy of his 100th birthday.
After playing college football at both LSU and Tulane and serving in the Navy during World War II, Jones was selected by the Chicago Cardinals with the second overall pick in the 1946 NFL draft, but he eschewed the NFL for the upstart All-American Football Conference. After playing briefly for two teams in that league, the Miami Seahawks and Brooklyn Dodgers, Jones joined the Browns and played the rest of his career for them, first in the AAFC and then in the NFL when the AAFC closed down and the Browns joined the NFL.
Hall of Fame Browns coach Paul Brown called Jones the “finest halfback in football,” and he became a star with the Browns, as a key player on two Browns teams that won AAFC championships and three teams that won NFL championships.
Jones’ finest moment came in a 1951 game against the Bears, when he scored four rushing touchdowns and two receiving touchdowns in a 42-21 win, becoming just the second player in NFL history to score six touchdowns in a game. Three quarters of a century later, Jones still has a share of the record: Ernie Nevers had done it before, and Gale Sayers and Alvin Kamara have done it since, but no player has ever scored more than six touchdowns in a game.
Jones retired from playing after the 1955 season, but he returned to the Browns in the 1960s as an assistant coach.
Dub is survived by his wife of 78 years, Schump Jones. They had seven children, 22 grandchildren and 48 great-grandchildren. One of their sons is Bert Jones, a Baltimore Colts quarterback who had a 10-year NFL career and was the 1976 NFL Most Valuable Player.
