Photo: The Associated Press

By Matthew Fairburn | mfairburn@nyup.com

Greenville, N.C. — Inside East Carolina’s weight room, there’s a quote written in red on the whiteboard. Scribbled between the weight-lifting jargon are the words of Vince Lombardi.

“A man cannot dream himself into character. He must hammer and forge himself into one.”

Talk to people at ECU and in Greenville, and you might believe Zay Jones has character you can only dream about. Name a box, and Jones checks it. He set an NCAA career record with 399 catches, had a 3.6 GPA and led the team in community service hours. He set the standard in the weight room and learned every wide receiver position in the Pirates' offense. Now he's preparing for his rookie season with the Buffalo Bills after getting drafted in the second round.





Yet, this isn’t the product of dreams. Rather, it’s the culmination of hammering and forging, first on the part of his father Robert, a three-time Super Bowl Champions and first-round pick of the Dallas Cowboys, and mother, Maneesha. Jones did his part, too, using his four years at ECU to develop a sparkling reputation on and off the field.

Yet five years ago, Jones was unwanted, an afterthought on the recruiting trail. If not for his father having played at East Carolina, the coaches at ECU might not have been privy to everything that made the Austin, Texas native a superstar waiting to happen. Sure, he was only 170 pounds, and his speed and stats didn’t jump off the page. But if he was anything like his old man, the Pirates thought they would have a star in the little-known two-star recruit.

“Throughout the beginning of my college career I really used that as motivation,” Jones admitted during minicamp, wearing a cutoff Bills T-shirt that showed off chiseled arms. “I was dead set out to get everyone who didn’t recruit me.”

But this isn’t one of those stories about an under-recruited kid who overachieves to prove all of his doubters wrong. That’s how it started, but it became so much more.

“As I got older I realized it wasn’t about the people who didn’t see anything in me,” Jones says. “Now it’s time to start playing for the people who believed in me.”

Lucky for Jones, the people who believed in him have never been hard to count.

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Photo: Robert Jones gives coach Barry Switzer a bath after the Cowboys beat the Steelers in Super Bowl XXX in 1996. Associated Press photo

***

The first person Jeff Conners saw when he walked into the weight room for his first day as the strength coach at East Carolina University in 1991 was Robert Jones. Robert stood 6-feet-3-inches tall, weighed 255 pounds, bench pressed 505 pounds and ran a 4.6 40-yard dash.

He would go on to lead the Pirates to an 11-win season, the best in program history. The Cowboys drafted him in the first round and he won three Super Bowls. All of that would be impressive enough if he didn't go through hell to get there. But he did. As Conners outlined in his book, Strength Coach: A Call to Serve, Robert went through unspeakable tragedy.





Robert’s dad shot his mother with a shotgun while she was breastfeeding Robert. Robert wasn’t harmed but was found covered in his mother’s blood. He was the youngest of eight kids, who all went in separate directions after their father went to prison. Robert went to live with an uncle, who became the closest thing he had to a father. When Robert was still young, his uncle shot a gas station worker while Robert was sitting in the car. Robert had to watch as police handcuffed his uncle and took him way.

That would have been enough to derail most anyone. But Robert found football. He latched onto mentors like Lawrence White, who played at his high school, and Billy Boswell, who coached his high school football team. As Robert transitioned from college football to pro football, both passed away from illness. One of Robert’s brothers hung himself, another overdosed on cocaine and another went to prison for murder.

Conners sat in his office at ECU on a June morning, surrounded by the framed jerseys of the greatest overachievers he’s coached. Robert’s jersey is up there, and he hopes one day, Robert’s son, Zay, will have his jersey hanging there. In a 35-minute conversation about Zay and how an under-recruited kid became a coveted NFL prospect, Conners keeps coming back to Robert and his story.

“It’s not pretty,” Conners said. “Because he lost all his mentors and had some tragic things happen, he decided to be the best dad in the world … Robert had a lot of challenges. The fact that Robert overcame a lot of challenges I think factored into the upbringing of his children, teaching them to overcome challenges. The fact that he lost all his mentors and still was very successful factored in that he was going to be the best mentor as a dad and emphasize family. I don’t think we can every emphasize family enough. So there’s so much to be learned and seen from the family and how the dad and the mom came together, the way they influenced their kids. Really it ought to be on some kind of talk show. Like this is the best that it gets. This is the best example that you can give anybody.”

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Talk to anyone about Zay Jones, and it’s not long before his mother and father come up in conversation. Robert married Maneesha, who is related to former NFL quarterback Jeff Blake, before he was drafted by the Cowboys. By all accounts, Zay is the perfect combination of his parents. He has his father’s unwavering discipline and toughness but also his mother’s charisma, smile and gentle nature away from the field.

“With them two, my father with the discipline,” Zay said. “Be on time, go to sleep, work hard, do extra. Then with my mother it was, be loving, be kind, be graceful, put others first. Put that together, it’s just a reflection of who I am.”

Zay’s mother homeschooled him until he was in the sixth grade. She taught him Latin and Spanish as well as how to study. Meanwhile, his father is the toughest coach he’s ever had.

“His responsibility to his children was that we never grew up like he did so he could give us a better life,” Zay said. “With that came boundaries and discipline and work ethic. It wasn’t going to be all given to us. We, as his children, weren’t just given cars or given cell phones. People think you turn 16 you’re supposed to have a car. No, you’re not. That’s a big misconception. This is my first time actually having a car. He implemented in us the ability to work hard and to go out and get what you want, but you have to do it in the right terms.”

Nearly every college in the country overlooked that aspect of Zay Jones, the recruit. They couldn’t see beyond his small frame and average speed. ECU had an advantage. They knew his father and his mother. They knew what type of person they would be getting in Zay, and they also had an idea that he wasn’t quite maxed out athletically.

“The heredity was always there,” Conners said. “When you look at his vertical jump, his broad jump, his 40 time. These are the indicators. I don’t think that a lot of people who recruited him knew the indicators. Because if you looked at his 40 times, you looked at his jumps, they were pretty good coming in but went off the chart as he progressed through his career. He’s broad jumping 11 feet and running a 4.3 indoor and went to the combine and ran a 4.4. I’m not so sure everybody was aware of the measurables.”

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Photo: The Associated Press

Conners has a formula. He takes five values of vertical jump in inches, three values of broad jump in inches and one value of power clean. He adds those three and divides by a player’s 40-yard dash time and that number is a strong predictor of success. Bruce Carter had the highest score ever with a 220. Zay’s score was over 200, and he power cleans 320 pounds.

“I felt fortunate as a coach that Robert trusted me,” Conners said. “I don’t think Robert even knew where Zay could go. But we will pour ourselves into these guys. I don’t think he got any favoritism. He just was a guy who responded at a higher level than most people.”

“I think the main thing Coach Conners did was, his system was based on old-fashioned heart and who is going to put in the time,” Zay added. “Some things didn’t come as naturally to me. It was always difficult. Pushing weight is never easy. But it was, ‘Who’s going to come everyday to work, put on the weight and do it?’ That’s something that i fit the mold of, because that’s who I am.”

Again, Conners said, credit goes to Robert and Maneesha.

“I personally believe kids coming in from high school need six months of character and life skills development,” Conners said. “Zay already had that. He was way ahead of people coming in because his dad held his feet to the fire. When you have parents that fly across the country for every game, that’s motivational. The family support, you can’t say enough there. He had it all. I think his mother wanted to make sure he had it all. I would give them a tremendous amount of credit.”

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Photo: The Associated Press

***

Brian Overton had a unique problem when he spent the week in Indianapolis at the NFL Scouting Combine in February. ECU’s director of player development always travels with his school’s prospects during the pre-draft circuit, and never was a player more prepared — physically, mentally and emotionally — than Zay was. The problem is, scouts and coaches kept asking a question he couldn’t answer.

“Coach, c’mon now,” they said. “This is too good to be true. I want something wrong with him. I have to be able to go in there and say he has this flaw.”

“I by no means pegged him as a perfect guy,” Overton said. “I never did that. But I did not shy away from saying this is as close to what you want as you’re going to get.”

One NFL scout said Zay was as impressive an interview as any prospect he’s come across. Scottie Montgomery played wide receiver in the NFL and coached the position for Pittsburgh and Washington before becoming ECU’s head coach prior to Zay’s senior season. He understands better than anyone how teams were trying to poke holes in Zay’s game leading up to the draft.

“Our jobs, even when I was a position coach in the National Football League, you put it out there that you’re trying to work guys down the board,” Montgomery said. “You’re finding everything. I really don’t know. I had so many conversations with guys and everything was positive. I don’t know. There were some good players that were drafted at receiver, too. I’m not bitter by any means. A lot of guys used to ask me, who poked so many holes in Emmanuel and who poked so many holes in Antonio and those guys? Hines Ward in the third round. Who was poking those holes? Sometimes those are the reasons why guys become the best players, because they weren’t taken high and they have that chip on their shoulder. So I don’t know with that one.”

Jones had 399 college catches. He ran 4.45-second 40-yard dash at the NFL scouting combine. He knew five different positions in ECU’s offense. He led the team in community service hours and was near the top of the team in GPA.

“This is not a joke or a facade or anything that you see when you see him every day,” Montgomery said. “He’s the real deal. A lot of people don’t know that throughout the process.”

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In his time as a liaison, Overton has never had a total package like Zay Jones. He sold him to NFL teams as a player who could be the face of the franchise, because he saw him become that figure in Greenville. He saw Zay hit it off with a teenage girl battling cancer on one of the team’s hospital visits. Her nickname was Zay, too, and the star wide receiver kept up with her throughout her treatment. He bought her UGGs on Christmas and sent her birthday gifts while he was training for the draft. He still smiles when he talks about her.

“That wasn’t for me to go out and tell the world,” he said. “To her it meant a lot. To me it meant a lot. If you can do that for people and have the ability to do it, then you should … When you’re given something and blessed by God with the opportunity, now that you’ve reached that platform, it’s now up to you. What do you want to do with what you’re given? It’s not about me. I’m going to try to impact everyone I can in the community and city of Greenville, whether it’s giving back or just being a good example.”

Overton can hardly recall a time when Zay said no to any sort of community event. When Zay was doing private workouts at ECU before the draft, a vendor stopped by the facility. His son was a huge fan of Zay’s, so Overton told them to stop by and Zay might have some time. On a whim, Zay spent 45 minutes with him.

“That kid has struggled some with his confidence and things like that,” Overton said. “He posted that picture on social media and all his friends thought it was so cool that he got that time with Zay. He said that was life changing for his son. I could give you five or six stories like that. I could fill up and hour of your time. That’s who he is.”

Overton uses him as a blueprint for other kids to follow. There’s a reason both Overton and Montgomery know they can’t even try to replace Zay. He left a culture in the wide receiver room that will be hard to replicate.

“You’re getting just an unbelievable human who spends all his time trying to bring his teammates along and coaching them on the field,” Montgomery said. “You’re also getting an individual who, on the field, competes at the highest level. There’s nothing that’s going to happen to him that he’s going to take easily. You’re getting a big time competitor, but off the field, I mean, you’re getting the creme de la creme.”

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***

Phil McGeoghan coached Zay in his final college season at ECU. So when the Buffalo Bills hired McGeoghan to be their wide receivers coach this offseason, the connection to Zay in the draft was obvious. On draft weekend, he was furiously texting with Overton to figure out where Zay would get drafted.

“A team picking (early in the second round) where Buffalo got him was about as serious as you could be about him,” Overton said. “Sent everybody down to work him out. Decision makers right on down. That team wanted to know, ‘Was it worth giving up picks to get into the bottom of the first?’”

Then the Bills traded in front of the Carolina Panthers. Overton just smiled.

“When that pick was sitting here, I said here it comes it’s over,” Overton said. “Man, Phil must have been in there beating the door down. I kept him in the loop a little bit. If you’re going to get him you better get him before X, Y and Z. It was funny seeing Buffalo jump up there and grab him. Me and Phil were texting like 10 minutes later and he was so fired up. It was funny, man.”

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A few months later at Bills training camp, McGeoghan, the son of a prison dentist and grandson of a Chief Master Sergeant in the military, does a masterful job of hiding whatever emotions he was feeling on draft weekend. He says he’s excited to have all of the receivers in the room. He might be the only person from ECU not to heap praise on Zay. Because at camp, Zay isn’t the face of the program or a community anymore. He’s a rookie, and he’s going to be coached like a rookie.

“I also understand his threshold for hard coaching,” McGeoghan said. “If you’re a rookie in the National Football League, you’re going to get coached and coached hard, especially if you’re wearing a Bills jersey. So I understood that he would learn how to take very difficult circumstances, whether it’s being a rookie or press coverage in the red zone or third-and-6 in the snow, he’s going to understand that it’s going to not be easy. So those are the type of characteristics that you know you’re going to get when you draft the type of player that you have background and history with.”

That background may have only been one season in Greenville, but McGeoghan and Jones made the most of it. Before the year, Jones told his new position coach he wanted to break the all-time career receptions record, previously held by fellow ECU Pirate Justin Hardy. Jones entered the season with 241 career catches, 141 away from Hardy’s record. So on the left side of his white board, McGeoghan wrote the number 147 and circled it.

“If you have a high goal, then your standards have to be high every day,” McGeoghan said. “Having a goal, just having it, doesn’t mean a thing if you don’t go and work your tail off every single day. So what I did with him was listen to his goal, believed it was attainable and then every single day I came to work knowing in my heart that if I gave him 100 percent and he met me 100 percent that we could reach that goal. That was it.”

That’s the extent to which McGeoghan wants to talk about the record because “it was something we did in the past.” Jones hasn’t made similar lofty goals for his rookie season, because “he knows better.”

Still, it’s hard not to marvel at what Jones did at ECU. Montgomery had him learn all five wide receiver positions. He called it a “necessity” given the team’s lack of depth at the position.

“People were wondering how in the world we were able to get him so many catches and how he was able to make so many plays and why couldn’t people double team him?” Montgomery said. “It’s because of his academics, man. Academically, he can go out there and dominate at every single spot.”

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The Bills have already implemented a similar plan for Jones. He’s learning two wide receiver positions in the Bills’ offense so the team can move him around if need be. Montgomery doesn’t expect an acclimation period for Jones, because he already handles himself like a pro.

Just don’t confuse Jones as one of those players with the cliched “chip on his shoulder.” His ear-to-ear smile, constant encouragement of teammates and hundreds of autographs he signs daily at practice suggest he’s anything but bitter. Sure, he was passed over in the NFL Draft. But his focus is on the team that stopped the fall. He used to wear the T-shirts of the colleges that passed on him while lifting weights. Now it’s an ECU pirates shirt under his Bills jersey.

“I was always trying to do a little extra, because I knew my team was going to need me in crucial situations and crucial downs,” Jones said. “How am I going to prepare for those moments so when my number, my name is called I’m going to be able to come through for my team. My team is a motivating factor.”

That team is in Buffalo now, and he never forgets who’s on his team.

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Read more: Inside Brandon Beane's unlikely rise to Buffalo Bills GM

To understand where Beane's belief in himself comes from, listen to people who know him best from his hometown of Norwood, N.C.

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