Jones specialized in sacks, a term that he coined. Nicknamed "the Secretary of Defense", Jones is considered one of the greatest defensive players ever. The Los Angeles Times called Jones "most valuable Ram of all time," and former Rams head coach George Allen called him the "greatest defensive end of modern football".
Due to a lack of television coverage and modern scouting networks, Jones was largely overlooked during his college career. According to an NFL Films interview with writer Ray Didinger, "Deacon was discovered kinda by accident. The Rams were scouting some running backs and they found this defensive tackle who was outrunning the running backs that they were scouting." Jones was drafted in the 14th round of the 1961 NFL Draft by the Los Angeles Rams. He then earned a starting role as a defensive end and teamed with tackle Merlin Olsen to give Los Angeles a perennial All-Pro left side of the defensive line. He became a part of the Fearsome Foursome defensive line of the Rams (along with Lamar Lundy, Rosey Grier, and Olsen), which is now considered to have been one of the best defensive lines of all time.
Jones was traded along with Lee White and Greg Wojcik from the Rams to the San Diego Chargers for Jeff Staggs, a second-rounder in 1972 (30th overall—Jim Bertelsen) and a second and third-rounder in 1973 (31st and 60th overall—Cullen Bryant and Tim Stokes respectively) on January 29, 1972. He was named San Diego's defensive captain and led all Chargers' defensive linemen in tackles and won a berth on the AFC Pro Bowl squad. He concluded his career with the Washington Redskins in 1974. In the final game of his NFL career, the Redskins allowed him to kick the point-after-touchdown for the game's last score. Along the way, Jones was named the Associated Press NFL Defensive Player of the Week four times: week 14, 1967; week 12, 1968; week 11, 1969; and week 10, 1970.
An extremely durable player, Jones missed only six games of a possible 196 regular-season encounters in his 14 National Football League seasons.
Jones was considered by many to revolutionize the position of defensive end. He was credited with coining the phrase "sacking the quarterback". He once stated that a quarterback being sacked devastated the offense in the same way that a city was devastated when it was sacked. In 1999, Jones provided a Los Angeles Times reporter with some other detailed imagery about his forte: "You take all the offensive linemen and put them in a burlap bag, and then you take a baseball bat and beat on the bag. You're sacking them, you're bagging them. And that’s what you're doing with a quarterback."
What separated Jones from every other defensive end was his speed and his ability to make tackles from sideline to sideline, which was unheard of in his time. He also was the first pass rusher to use the head slap, a move that he said was, "to give myself an initial head start on the pass rush, in other words an extra step. Because anytime you go upside a man's head … or a woman; they may have a tendency to blink they [sic] eyes or close they eyes. And that's all I needed." "The head slap was not my invention, but Rembrandt, of course, did not invent painting. The quickness of my hands and the length of my arms, it was perfect for me. It was the greatest thing I ever did, and when I left the game, they outlawed it."
Pro Football Weekly reported he accumulated 173.5 sacks over his career. The total would be third on the all-time sack list, which would have ranked first all-time at the time of his retirement by a substantial margin. Pro-Football-Reference.com in 2021 confirmed this sack total with their research.
In 1967, Jones had 21.5 sacks in only 14 games; he tallied 22 sacks in 14 games the following year. If official, this would have stood as an NFL record until Harvey Martin's 1977 campaign in which he totaled 23 sacks. This number was also equaled by Al Baker a year later. (The term "sack" had not yet been coined at the time, and official sack statistics were not recorded by the NFL until 1982.)
Jones worked as a television actor, and appeared in numerous TV programs since the 1970s, most often appearing in cameo roles. He appeared in an episode of The Odd Couple where he and Oscar were in a television commercial selling shaving products. He appeared on The Brady Bunch, and in a Bewitched episode in 1969, he played a guard to the Giant's castle in "Sam & the Beanstalk". Jones also played himself on an episode of Wonder Woman in 1978.
In 1978, he played a Viking named Thall in The Norseman. Fellow Hall of Famer Fred Biletnikoff joined Jones in the film, also portraying a Norseman. That same year, Jones portrayed a fierce defensive lineman named Gorman in the film Heaven Can Wait.
In the series G vs E, he played himself, but as an agent of "The Corps". He also played a role in the hit show, ALF, where he played a father figure to Alf.
Jones served as a color analyst for Rams broadcasts on KMPC radio in the 1994 season, teaming with Steve Physioc and Jack Snow. In 1998, shortly before Super Bowl XXXII between the Denver Broncos and Green Bay Packers, Jones correctly predicted the Broncos, 11 1/2 point underdogs, would win the game and Terrell Davis would be named MVP of the game.
Jones worked for many companies, including the Miller Brewing Company, Haggar Clothing, Pacific Coast Medical Enterprises, and Epson America, and represented the NFL and Champion Products as spokesman for their Throwback campaigns. Jones was also chairman for AstraZeneca Pharmaceuticals in their national hypertension awareness program.
NFL.com reported that Jones made several trips to Iraq to visit the U. S. military.
Jones served as the president and CEO of the Deacon Jones Foundation, an organization he founded in 1997 "to assist young people and the communities in which they live with a comprehensive program that includes education, mentoring, corporate internship, and community service."
Jones was one of the many former L.A. Rams players who disliked the team's controversial relocation to St. Louis in 1995. He was adamant in interviews and appearances that he played for Los Angeles, not St. Louis, and considered the Rams franchise there a different team that should have a different name. He participated in many grassroots efforts to bring NFL football back to L.A. and also voiced support on many new stadium proposals. The Rams eventually returned to Los Angeles in 2016 after Jones had died.
He was elected to the Pro Football Hall of Fame in his first year of eligibility in 1980, and was named to the NFL's 75th Anniversary All-Time Team in 1994. In 1999, he was ranked number 13 on The Sporting News list of the 100 Greatest Football Players, the highest-ranked player to have played for the Rams franchise, the highest-ranked defensive end, and the second-ranked defensive lineman behind Bob Lilly. The same year, he was named by Sports Illustrated as the "Defensive End of the Century". In 2010, he was named to the inaugural class of the Black College Football Hall of Fame.
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