Ex-tight end has seen game change quite a bit
Edited transcript of a conversation with former 49ers tight end Brent Jones.
Q: I wanted to ask you about Vernon (Davis). What scares me about any athlete in their prime — and this may not be fair — is when they say, “Oh, I’m not just an athlete; I like to paint. Oh, I have my brand.” And I’m thinking to myself, “Hey, Jack, you better concentrate on playing football.” Does that scare you? A: It scares me, but I have my old-timer’s hat on. The game’s changed, the players have changed, the money’s changed and what is accepted from the current crop of athletes has changed. When we played, it was all about football and if you even thought something like that, you sure as hell didn’t tell anybody. Q: Would (Bill Walsh’s) coaching style of “Hey, do it my way” work in today’s NFL? A: I do think it can play in a certain locker room, but you have to have the culture that plays to that approach. I think you have a lot of that in New England. I’ve actually heard that some of the studies the 49ers have interacted with, with regards to letting guys check their phones and their texts every hour after meetings for 10 or 15 minutes, and that scares the crap outta me. Bill wouldn’t have stood for that, no ifs, and or buts about it. Q: I’ve always been curious, what’s the NFL pension like? A: I will give you my pension numbers. They just got adjusted, but when I’m 55 — and I’m probably in the top 2 or 3 percent — I will get around $3,800, $3,900 a month. Now if you translate that to baseball I would be getting around $15,000 a month so that’s the discrepancy. Baseball hired a
high-powered lawyer to negotiate and we hired an offensive lineman to negotiate our deal. Q: When you give up your body for so many years it just feels like the pension is not a lot? A: I have to say I’m thankful for that. The guys that played prior to me are probably making half or a third of that, so it’s a tough go, and I think the league’s done a lot of good things, but they really haven’t put their money where their mouth is when it comes to former players. The league has escalated to where the franchises are making billions, so they could take care of the old guys, but the league is like, “What have you done for me lately?” We had Gene Upshaw doing our deal and it was great, we finally got free agency so a short-term win, but in the long term it wasn’t so great. Q: Gene Upshaw was a great player for the Raiders but too close to management to strike a good deal. A: I had a respectful relationship with Gene and certainly admired him as a young player growing up. As the head of the players’ union he told a bunch of retired players that are struggling, that are hurting basically to, “Shove it, I don’t work for you. I don’t care. I’m making my $7 (million), $8 million a year.” There were some guys that wanted a piece of Gene Upshaw so he was a controversial head of the union there, but it is what it is.