Less than 48 hours removed from a loss to the Buffalo Bills, the soon-to-be free agent finds himself on a gray patterned couch at Saint John Paul II Catholic Academy’s Lower Mills campus in Boston.
The result of that game eliminated the Patriots from playoff contention. Jones was in coverage when Stefon Diggs came up with a tip-your-cap touchdown pass from Josh Allen that all but sealed the deal, and that very well might be the way his seven-year tenure in New England ends.
But for anyone in that library who didn’t know that, it would have been hard to tell watching him read Giant Steps to Change the World to a group of the school’s youngest students, asking his actually audience questions after every page.
“On some days your dreams may seem too far away to realize,” Jones read from the first few lines. “Listen to the whispers of those that came before… who had hard days but dared to make their dream come true.”
This visit was a collaboration with his Next Step Foundation and iRobot, who came together to donate a STEM lab to the school. He’ll do a similar visit to another local school in the spring. His daughter Skylar’s love of science and sports inspires a lot of his community outreach, but his own underdog story shares similarities to those he’s reading about from the children’s book by Spike and Tonya Lee.
“Everyone has obstacles,” said the Patriots’ 2016 undrafted free agent signing, who parlayed passion and work ethic into seven seasons in the NFL thus far. “I’ve had my fair share of obstacles and these kids do as well, but if you continue to fight through adversity, there’s an opportunity for you.”
The cliche holds more weight coming from an NFL prospect who, despite his speed, fell from projections for being undersized. After a season-ending shoulder injury and the consecutive departures of corners J.C. Jackson and Stephon Gilmore, not many expected him to fill in on the outside with some of the league’s most elite receivers joining the division.
Jones is up for every challenge, though. Not just a switch from the slot.
His latest, as he reveals to the class, has to do with a river dam on the Georgia compound he purchased last offseason. A young student had just announced that her dad is an engineer, and he is seeking some advice. Jones studied business at Auburn, but if football and track & field would have allowed, he probably would have taken up a track more along those lines.
This property development venture presented itself while the Carrollton native was looking for some land to take out his four wheelers. It became a much bigger undertaking once he saw the potential of a 65-acre plot with two lakes, cabins, and a church.
For the HGTV fan, who has been known to casually browse Zillow and abruptly move into a new home for no reason other than the desire to experience different areas and architecture, this is an unsurprising progression – even if his last construction project was just building his great grandmother a new front porch with his dad. For a bulk of his years in the league, he would change his address before and after every offseason instead of going back home.
“HGTV is always on at the house,” Jones said. “It’s something I love to just sit back and watch. I like to see the transformations of what someone starts and finishes with, and seeing people’s ideas come to fruition is always awesome to see.”
His vision for this Douglas County property includes rental cabins along the lake and the transformation of the old church into a giant event space. By the end of this offseason, he hopes to have a few animals on the farm.
“My mind just started running with the idea,” Jones said. “I started to see barndominiums take off as the new thing: big open event spaces and living spaces. It was something I saw as an investment and building up for people to get use out of. When I saw the cabins along the lake I just thought of this idea of making it one big property where your family could come in, rent out the cabins. And if you look at trends, especially in our generation, not as many people are getting married in churches – it’s these nice, creative little getaways that everyone wants for their weddings. I took those ideas and ran with them.”
The project, as he’s learning, isn’t for the weak, but he wants to be as hands-on with it as possible.
Jones watched his grandfather run a construction company, and helped his handyman father with renovations around their house growing up. Parts of that Jack-of-all-traits persona certainly were inherited from them, but as he tries to reiterate to the students sitting before him, the confidence to take on anything came from his mother.
“I always enjoyed school, and looking back that was all my mom,” Jones said. “She didn’t care if I played football. She didn’t care if I ran track. She cared that my report card had As on it – that’s it. She pushed me, and that made football, college, and every step along the way that much easier.”
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