Three years ago, as the Sean Payton Era came to Denver, veteran defensive tackle D.J. Jones was assigned a new cubby. It sat in the back left corner, across from the main entrance to the Broncos’ locker room. A tiny nook for a 305-pound man, disappearing from view to anyone not immediately wandering by.
A small corkboard hung on the nearby back wall. Jones, entering his second year in Denver, took a Sharpie and penned a message. This, he christened, was now the Ugly Cona.
He didn’t put much else up on that corkboard. But he tucked an aged photo of himself at one years old, smiling, at the bottom. And he scribbled another phrase, up above it: Where we smile, but we don’t like ya.
“We grimey over here,” Jones told The Denver Post in the locker room, last week. “This ain’t the corner to come to smiling.”
He was smiling when he said it, though. And most people end up smiling, near the Ugly Cona.
As expectations have skyrocketed year-over-year under Payton in Denver, as this locker room now contains a group of men who haven’t been shy about voicing desires for a Super Bowl, the Ugly Cona remains much the same. So does the man who inhibits it. Few on this roster do uglier work than the Broncos’ starting nose tackle, and Jones commands a rarified air because of it, an understated veteran who has become a stabilizer.
Jonathon Cooper declares fellow Broncos OLB Nik Bonitto ‘best pass-rusher in the NFL’
And the Broncos have needed a stabilizer, through a tumultuous early stretch in 2025 that left a sea of veterans frustrated at two improbable last-second losses.
“There’s not very many times in your life that you’re considered the voice,” defensive end John Franklin-Myers said. “And D.J. is considered the voice of this team.
“And we wouldn’t want it any other way.”
In the offseason, the 30-year-old Jones was suddenly named a captain for the first time in his nine-year NFL career. Nobody around him can quite pinpoint why it was this year, though, because D.J. Jones has been the same D.J. Jones since he was that little man smiling in the corkboard photo.
“I think it was the same things that you see from D.J. every year,” said right tackle Mike McGlinchey.
“I feel like it was a long time coming,” outside linebacker Nik Bonitto said.
“The stuff he does in here, it’s special,” inside linebacker Alex Singleton said.
After teammates stamped him with the C in early September, Jones told them he wouldn’t change. They don’t want him to. His authenticity is the key to his status, down here in Dove Valley.
Sometimes, that is the voice of calming reason in a training camp practice. Sometimes that is the voice that will “get in your (expletive),” as McGlinchey said, if the situation calls for it. Jones has a “really good pulse,” as defensive end Zach Allen put it, for how to motivate any member of his locker room at any given moment.
He didn’t light anyone up after a 1-2 start to 2025. Jones has experienced a Super Bowl in earlier years in San Francisco, and also experienced a 4-12 season . His widespread message to teammates last week was simple: We’re fine.
“I mean, the first game was a fourth preseason game,” Jones told The Post, a few days before righting the ship with a 28-3 win over the Bengals on Monday. “So it’s like, we just lost our two openers to two great teams. Now we get an opportunity to go primetime? We’re fine. I’m not panicking.
“This ain’t time to panic,” he muttered. “I don’t panic.”
Jones grew up in Greenville, S.C. , and went to three different high schools, moving around to help his father David “Big Dave” Jones try and launch various iterations of Southern barbecue joints. He began his collegiate career at “Last Chance U” — East Mississippi Community College (EMCC) — because his GPA wasn’t good enough to meet Division I requirements. He is now starting at the heart of one of the best defenses in the NFL, and wearing a captain’s badge, and is fresh off a $39 million extension this offseason .
Over the years, folks have asked him how he made it this far. Jones always tells them the same thing: he knew where to be, and where not to be, and what to do, and what not to do.
“Growing up, I knew the parties to be at,” Jones told The Post. “I mean, I went to some, of course. But I knew what to not do at that party. I knew when to leave that party. And so, I mean, I knew who to be around.
“It was a lot of people growing up that I played with – way better talent than me,” Jones continued. “They just didn’t know how to get out of that party. Simple.”
He learned this long before two years playing for EMCC head coach Buddy Stephens made him “a dog,” as he put it.
“I’m just going to say this — I have three daughters,” Stephens said. “If I had a son, I’d want him to be like D.J. That’s as much as I can give.”
When the Jets suddenly traded Franklin-Myers to the Broncos in April 2024 , Jones was one of the “first or second people” to reach out to him, Franklin-Myers remembered. Jones has long treated people like they’re a customer at Big Dave’s, as his high school coach Jeff Tate put it. And everyone on the Broncos leans on Jones for advice, Franklin-Myers said. In practice. On gamedays.
“He really is that calming influence,” Allen said. “And for us up front, that’s huge. For a guy in-game to kinda be so smart, and feel that, is really rare.”
Jones preaches, Franklin-Myers said, and his tape backs it up. The Broncos’ pass-rush is arguably the most fearsome in the league — leading the NFL in pressures and pressure rate through four weeks — and Jones is off to one of the best starts of his career, with rotational mate Malcolm Roach on injured reserve. He has six QB hurries in four games, and was a terror early in Week 3 against the Chargers, with three interior pressures and a couple run-stuffs .
“We got flashy guys like Nik and stuff, and they look good all the time,” Singleton said last week, as Bonitto threw his hands up nearby in mock offense. “But it’s because of guys like D.J., who are willing to just sit in there and eat double-teams.”
On Sunday, the Broncos move to a regular-season test unlike few before in Payton’s tenure, playing in Philadelphia against an Eagles team that’s won 20 of its last 21 games. And Jones’ group faces a play that’s broken the game — the goal-line “Tush Push” that QB Jalen Hurts and running back Saquon Barkley perfected in last year’s Super Bowl run.
The Broncos will need the Ugly Cona, in moments like these.
“If it arises, man,” Jones said of the Tush Push, “just grab your nuts and try our best to stop it.”
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