The best offensive lineman in Seattle Seahawks history grew up happy and poor in Aliceville, Ala.

Walter Jones had no idea at the time, but as a no-bull coach would tell him later, he was a million dollars walking around broke. Jones had Pro Bowl potential even as a 10-pound, 15-ounce newborn.

“One thing you can put in there, he was never small,” Jones’ mother, Earline, said with a howl. “And I don’t care how you frame that.”

Walter Jones has made it big, alright. Six-foot-five and 320 pounds. Five Pro Bowls. Sixteen-million-dollar signing bonus. Seven-year, $52.5 million contract. Respect from teammates and opponents alike.

And yet he has remained one of the least-explored sports figures around. Jones’ true identity might as well be hidden in the haze from the Montecristo No. 3s he favors during Sunday-night “Sopranos” sessions with the Seahawks’ starting center.

Robbie Tobeck has encouraged his teammate to indulge in more exotic varieties, and Jones could seemingly afford to have Fidel Castro deliver fresh Cohibas to his side in a virgin-cedar humidor. But when your mother fed seven kids while pulling down $3.75 an hour at the garment factory, exotic isn’t really part of your makeup.

“When everybody else was eating baloney sandwiches and hot dogs, mine was eating pinto beans, black-eyed peas, collard greens and cornbread,” Jones’ mother said. “And 36 biscuits in the morning time – just a long big pan of biscuits – when everyone else made white bread.”

Jones’ father was not part of the equation.

“The way I kept it going was just, cook some food,” Earline Jones said. “It was rough sometimes to keep them full, but if you get them full and send them outside to play, they pretty well can make it.

“Poor was poor,” she said, “but they never complained about anything. They were just a happy group of children. The Lord and those kids are what kept me going.”

AT THE PEAK OF HIS POWERS

There might not be a better offensive tackle in the game. Walter Jones does things on a football field that go unnoticed by the casual fan. It’s the nature of his position. But watch closely and you’ll see one reason for Seattle’s offensive success in recent seasons.

Jones almost always prevents his man from pressuring the quarterback or factoring into a running play. Sometimes he takes out two guys, as if for sport. Even when he makes a mistake and becomes off-balance – a predicament leading to acute embarrassment for most linemen – Jones usually recovers in time to prevail.

“The rookies are like, ‘Yeah, I’m going to watch Walt,’ ” teammate Sean Locklear said. “And I tell them, ‘Yeah, watch him, but don’t try to do that.’ You can’t. I tried it. We all tried it. You just can’t do what he does.”

Defensive coordinator Ray Rhodes was a little more blunt.

“With other teams, every time we played against Walter Jones, whoever lined up in front of him, he kicked the crap out of them,” Rhodes said. “I am in the coaches’ room with some of the guys who I coached with on other teams, and I said, ‘You know, I am embarrassed for you.’

“One of the old coaches I used to work with said, ‘When Walter goes up against the majority of the guys in the league, it’s like you put the guy in a paper bag and carry him around and hold him up for game day and whip his butt and put him back in there.’

“That is how Walter Jones is. He is a dominating player.”

Dwaine Board, understated coach of the Seahawks’ defensive line, compares Jones to Anthony Munoz and Jackie Slater, the Hall of Fame tackles Board faced as a San Francisco 49er during the 1980s.

“Anthony, boy, he was a lot like Walter,” Board said. “You always had to work him every play and you had to set him up.

“It was kind of like a chess match. That’s what Walter plays with guys. Jackie Slater, he was just big and had long arms. He was ferocious, man. The arms made it tough.”

Slater was a seven-time Pro Bowl choice in 20 NFL seasons. Munoz claimed 11 Pro Bowls in 12 seasons.

Jones has five in eight seasons, including four in a row. He is 31 years old and at the peak of his powers. Elite tackles often play effectively into their mid-to-late 30s.

“Walt is amazing,” Tobeck said. “I was joking around with Grant Wistrom. Five or six years ago, when Grant was with the Rams, he got a sack on Walt one time and the very next play, Walt literally picked him up and slammed him onto his back. And it’s like, ‘Geez, man.’

“It is just a good thing he is such a nice guy.”

THE QUIET OBSERVER

Jones appears incapable of becoming rattled. No one can remember him losing his temper or getting into a scuffle.

“That has a lot to do with my mom and how she raised us,” Jones said. “If you can walk away from a situation, walk away from it. That has always been my way.

“It’s not worth it. You might get in a fight with somebody and you might do something, hurt them or something, so you try to stay away from that stuff.”

Jones seemed unflappable even as a child, always the quiet observer.

Even now, Earline Jones says she has to make eye contact to be sure she is reaching her youngest son.

Jones’ longtime agent, Roosevelt Barnes, knows the routine. Back when Walter was finishing his career at Florida State, Barnes assumed he had bombed miserably with his recruiting pitch. The carefully planned presentation seemed to gain no traction.

“Walter didn’t say a word, not one word,” Barnes said. “I don’t even know if he blinked.”

Barnes checked to make sure Jones had heard him. This brought a nod.

“I promise you he didn’t say one word,” Barnes said. “After I got up and left, I said, ‘Boy, I blew that one. He hates me.’ ”

Finally, after Florida State played its bowl game, Jones let Barnes in on the good news.

“He said, ‘Roosevelt, I like what you said and I just want you to do what you promised,’ ” Barnes recalled. “Which I could not believe.”

Tobeck encountered similar treatment upon joining the Seahawks as a free agent in 2000. Jones had been with the team since becoming the sixth overall choice in the 1997 draft. Tobeck had entered the league as an undrafted free agent with Atlanta in 1993.

Eyebrow raised, Jones seemed to be sizing up his new teammate upon their first meeting, as if to say, “Who is this guy?” Tobeck, having heard favorable reviews on Jones and knowing no other way, started in with his trademark banter. Now they watch “The Sopranos” together, no surprise given Tobeck’s status as the ultimate wise guy.

Two years ago, as the Seahawks tried to clinch a playoff berth in San Francisco, quarterback Matt Hasselbeck rallied the offense with an impassioned speech. They had all been there since training camp, the quarterback implored. This was what it was all about.

Tobeck couldn’t resist.

“Walt hasn’t been here since training camp,” he interrupted.

Jones, of course, had missed camp during a contract impasse.

“It was one of those moments,” Tobeck said. “A little levity during a TV timeout.”

QUICK TO SMILE

The laugh is always ready. You can see it on Jones’ face most of the time, as if he’s the only one in on the joke. And then it comes.

“Ha-ha-ha-ha!”

Hasselbeck thinks it’s closer to something out of the Sherman Klump movie starring Eddie Murphy. All agree that the laugh doesn’t always need a good reason to come out and play.

“The night-before-the-game meal, all the offensive linemen get together,” Hasselbeck said. “Some of them go to bed early and then (former teammate) Trent Dilfer and I would sometimes join the table.

“And it’s Robbie and Steve Hutchinson and Chris Gray telling the exact same story they told two weeks before. We were all there when the story happened and they tell it again, and Walt laughs so hard at it that we’ll all just kind of laugh.”

Sometimes the joke is on Jones.

“Hey Walt, what’s it like down in Alabama?” Hasselbeck will mock. “Hey Walt, if I came down to Alabama, would you shoot your shotgun in the air when I got close to your house, or would you let me in?”

Jones’ response might engender fear if teammates didn’t know better.

“Hasselbeck, you joke too much,” he might say, as if the left tackle and quarterback aren’t close enough to clown that way.

During a practice last month, Jones seemed more serious than usual. He had slipped or otherwise missed an assignment and Hasselbeck made a crack about him not being in Alabama pushing Escalades any more, a reference to one of Jones’ favorite training regimens.

Jones appeared to take offense.

“He came over to me straight-faced, dead serious and said, ‘If you ever say something like that again, we’re going to have a problem, we’re going to go,’” Hasselbeck said. “And I know he’s just too nice a guy, so I just sort of fired back and pretended like I was about to get into a fight with him.

“The people around were sort of looking like, ‘Uh, is this real?’ And of course Tobeck knows Walt like I do, knows he won’t do anything. So Robbie shoves me into the shark tank, throws me right into Walt and we’re going chest to chest.

“Now it’s a little scary. But at the same time, Walt went from straight face to a smile and big laugh.”

OLD-SCHOOL DISCIPLINE

There are high school principals, and then there is Pierce McIntosh, principal of Gentry High on B.B. King Road in Indianola, Miss. His approach to keeping order did not come from the PTA handbook.

“I’ve been arrested about six times, but my test scores are up and there’s no more gangs in the school,” McIntosh said proudly. “Parents now, they don’t say a thing to me any more.”

McIntosh imparted his brand of old-school discipline on Jones while working as the coach at Aliceville High. In another life, he earned $2 a day as a farm worker picking cotton and hauling hay; when he later took a job earning $4.60 an hour on an assembly line in Detroit, McIntosh said he thought he’d found something close to heaven.

To keep tabs on players in Aliceville, McIntosh maintained phone numbers for their friends, girlfriends, mothers and grandparents. “Even if Mom tells a lie,” he explained, “Grandma won’t.”

So, when Jones and teammate Juan Dancy skipped practice in the pursuit of female companionship, the hunt was on. McIntosh found them some 30 miles away, and he offered a choice.

“Either the coach was going to punish us or the players were, and we had to decide who we wanted,” said Dancy, who lives in Oklahoma City and remains Jones’ close friend. “I kept looking at Walt. He kept looking at me.”

McIntosh checks in at 6-5 and 300 pounds, ample evidence of his own career as an offensive lineman. Now 54, he graduated from high school just as Mississippi’s public schools were beginning forced integration. The state’s college programs were still overwhelmingly white.

He went the junior-college route and played some pro ball in Canada and for Birmingham of the old World Football League.

A tryout with the New Orleans Saints went nowhere after coach Hank Stram learned that McIntosh had spent the previous four years welding A-frames in Detroit.

After some deliberation, Jones and Dancy decided they would take their lumps from the players, no doubt about it.

“We was in a world of trouble,” Dancy recalled. “The whole football team got to spank us. I’m serious.

“They had a paddle and we had to go down the line. They were taking it easy on me, but they weren’t taking it too easy on Walt.

“Even with that, he didn’t get mad. He was laughing and I was going, ‘Man, you’re crazy.’ ”

STUDENT BECOMES THE TEACHER

Walter Jones doesn’t volunteer much in the way of conversation, but he’ll listen if you have something to say. McIntosh often did.

“I have worked with several kids that have had the opportunity to play professional ball,” the former coach said, “and it’s a strange thing when you’re trying to tell a kid what they need to do to be successful and they are 16 or 17 years old and know it all.

“I sat Walter down and I said, ‘Walter, son, you are a million dollars walking around broke. You have no idea what you can do.’

“I wrote down a list of things I needed him to do and by my surprise, Walter did everything.”

That included staying home on weekends to focus on his studies. Jones had fallen behind in school and needed the extra work to catch up. Summer classes also helped.

McIntosh pushed hard. He scheduled practices for 6 in the morning. Jones would be there. “One time he was not at practice and I sent one of the coaches to find him,” McIntosh said. “He was walking to practice and he had about four or five miles to get there.”

Jones was about 245 pounds, much bigger than the other kids. He was a fearsome tight end. McIntosh used to instruct a defender to lie on the ground so Jones could scoop him up without losing his balance. He also had Jones push around an old Ford F-100 pickup.

Jones’ talent did the rest – on the basketball court, too. Dancy recalled Jones shattering a glass backboard on an alley-oop dunk.

McIntosh had seen raw talent before. He knew he had a player when Jones jolted him during drills.

“I still had a little spunk in me back then,” McIntosh said. “I still wrestled with the kids and threw them around. I could handle myself pretty good in those days.

“And so I was showing them how to pass block. They hadn’t been taught anything, and I was whopping them right and left. I’d just show them how to step out and set their hips, that kind of stuff.

“I was going to take my right hand and chop it down on Walter’s left hand and swim over him with my left hand. And man, that boy, he pumped me in my chest and he stood me up.

“I went to swipe down with that right hand and he pulled that hand back and popped me again. I said, ‘I got a player here’ because, hell, I knew exactly what I was doing and I was just teaching him how to do that stuff.”

JUST DO YOUR JOB

A couple years back, Washington Redskins linebacker Lavar Arrington smacked Jones on the side of his helmet, allowing defensive end Bruce Smith to sack Hasselbeck. Jones did not retaliate in kind.

“You try to get those guys back by trying to keep them out of the stat sheet,” he said. “As a defensive player, that’s how they get their glory, by looking in the stat sheet.

“If after the game he’s not in the stat sheet, I’ve done my job.”

Tampa Bay’s Simeon Rice had 12 sacks last season, but his name did not appear in the stat sheet for his efforts during Seattle’s victory over the Bucs. No tackles, no sacks, no evidence of his participation.

Jones dominated their Week 2 matchup 13 days after reporting to camp.

“The year I gave up a sack with Bruce, it was tough,” Jones said. “You get to a point where people are used to you playing a certain way and something goes wrong and they don’t know how to react to it.”

Jones is generally at his best immediately following those few plays when an opponent beats him.

The Rams’ Anthony Hargrove knocked him down during the Seahawks’ first-round playoff game last season; on the next play, Jones decked Hargrove with one quick shove and retreated in time to push Damione Lewis past the quarterback.

The two-for-one special helped Seattle convert on third-and-long.

All in a day’s work.

“You have to stay humble,” Jones said. “I try to be even-keeled, just go out there and do my job and not get caught up in that.

“You just go out there and try to stay consistent in what you do. As long as you do that, things are going to work out fine. That’s something my mom always taught me. Just go out and do your job.”

RAGS TO RICHES

Earline Jones doesn’t have to work any more. She signed on as a greeter at the local Wal-Mart mostly to get out and meet people, but Walter pulled the plug on that one. “Those people will think I’m not taking care of you,” he told her.

Little chance of that. Jones was at his grandmother’s bedside in April when she passed away following an illness.

When the Pro Bowl calls each February, Jones takes his immediate family, plus spouses and minus kids, to Hawaii for the week. Twenty-one people is the family record.

“When I do things or am invited to something, I like them to be able to experience that, to taste that,” Jones said.

Earline Jones, former garment inspector, is a four-time Pro Bowler herself.

“He told me, ‘Mom, you could have gave me away and you didn’t,’ ” she said. “So, he takes care of me.”

When Jones was a kid, there wasn’t always enough money to buy shoes that fit. Earline Jones broke down crying the first time she saw Walter’s closet in Seattle.

“From one pair of sneakers or no pair of sneakers to so many that you couldn’t even count, I just got blindsided with tears,” she said. “His feet started growing young. He said, ‘When I make it, I’ll never be without a pair of sneakers.’ ”

Jones has his own family now. He and his wife, Valeria, are parents to 5-year-old paternal twins, Walterius and Waleria.

Their shoes fit.

“Now I can look back and see the struggles that we had,” Walter said. “Back then as a kid, you don’t realize the struggles. You’re just happy to be part of a great family, man.

“Everybody’s got a story. It’s just something that I can look back on now and say my mom did some great things for us and got us on the right path.”

Jones’ brother Danny is serving in the Army in Korea. Tony and Cornelius are sheriff’s deputies. Gwen is working toward her real-estate license. Beverly is a nurse. Valerie works at a restaurant. Tonya is a homemaker.

“All my kids are successful,” their mother said. “If any kids are supposed to be on drugs, statistics-wise, mine were supposed to.

“All of them turned out to be the opposite of what society says that they are supposed to be. That’s what I’m so proud of.”

Just don’t ask her for any pictures.

“I probably didn’t know what a camera looked like back then,” she said. “I was just trying to survive. …

“I’m not ashamed to say it, the Jones family was brought from rags to riches.”

McIntosh recalled what Walter told him upon signing his rookie contract in 1997.

“He said, ‘Coach, remember when you said I was a million dollars walking around broke? I ain’t broke no more, coach.’

“And I just had to laugh.”

THE WALTER JONE FILE

Full name: Walter Jones

Born: Jan. 19, 1974

First words: “Ball” was right up there. Says Mom: “All he would say was, ‘Ball.’ He wanted his ball.”

High School: Aliceville (Ala.)

Junior college: Holmes (Miss.) Community College

College: Florida State

Drafted: 1997 (sixth overall by Seahawks)

NFL seasons: Eight

Pro Bowl appearances: Five

Jersey Number: 71

Married: Christmas Eve 1997, to Valeria

Children: Walterius and Waleria, paternal twins (born 1999), and stepson Rafael, 19

Favorite show: The Sopranos (HBO)

Known to impersonate: Jamie Foxx (“In Living Color”, “Ray”)

Favorite cereal as a kid: Corn flakes

Favorite beer: “I like Heinekens,” Jones said, “but being an o-lineman, there’s nothing wrong with a nice cold Bud Light.”

Cigar of choice: Montecristo No. 3 ($10 apiece in volume)

Preferred wardrobe: Gym shorts, T-shirt and sandals

WEIGHING IN ON WALTER

“Walt is the type of guy, he’s not quick to open up to you. But once he does, he’s an open book. He really is. He is a lot of fun.”
Robbie Tobeck, Seahawks Center

Mike Sando: 425-822-9504
mike.sando@thenewstribune.com