Arthur and Jon Jones strutted into the house flaunting wrestling headgear and proudly announced they had joined the wrestling team.

Their younger brother, Chandler, who is now a senior defensive end for Syracuse, was intrigued. He wasn’t quite sure how the headgear worked but tried it on anyway.

He put it on backward by mistake.

‘That’s when sports first came into my family,’ Chandler Jones said.

Jones was in third grade at the time, and this was his first exposure to sports. That dramatic entrance by his brothers marked the beginning of what would one day become three stellar athletic careers — one by each Jones child.

On the other side of the country, Mikhail Marinovich was already well in tune with the world of sports. His half brother is Todd Marinovich, a former star at Southern California and first-round pick in the NFL Draft.

His father, Marv Marinovich, is a former NFL offensive lineman who became a strength and conditioning coach. He led Mikhail through six-hour workouts every day starting in the fourth grade.

Sometimes, they would focus on a specific sport for six hours. Other times, they ran along the beach from pier to pier.

‘I grew up on goat milk when I was a kid,’ Mikhail said. ‘Every little thing to try and build up my nervous system.’

Both Mikhail and Jones’ lives have since carried them to the same place — starting at defensive end for the Syracuse football team, whose defense ranked No. 7 in the country last season. Mikhail enters the season as the starter for the third consecutive season. Jones was the starter last year and also started eight games in 2009.

But both have their own individual strengths — honed from opposite pasts — that separate them from each other as they work together to be bookends along the Syracuse defensive front.

‘He works on different moves than I do and I’m even capable of,’ Mikhail said of Jones. ‘And I do different things than he’s capable of. It’s just two different styles that come together and make a great defense.’

Life as a Marinovich

Mikhail believes his biggest strength shouldn’t even exist. A 6-foot-5-inch, 253-pound defensive lineman shouldn’t be so quick.

‘I’m not supposed to be as fast as I am,’ he said. ‘Through all the training I did growing up, it really enabled me to be where I am today.’

Marv raised Mikhail very similarly to the way he raised his first son, Todd. He pushed both sons to the extreme, working them hours upon hours every day from grade school through high school. They ate only the healthiest foods. And training was never light.

Their social lives were very often lost to hyper-intensive workouts. In his post-playing days, Marv studied Eastern Bloc training methods that focused on increasing speed and flexibility.

‘To me, if you train slow with heavy weights like they do mostly in high schools and colleges, it’s not positive at all,’ Marv said. ‘You can’t get fast by training slow. I don’t care what anybody says.’

Todd, now 42, had a stellar career at USC and was taken with the 24th pick by the Oakland Raiders in 1991. He was once looked at as one of the best young quarterbacks in the game.

But while the vigorous upbringing may have led to that success, many blamed that same upbringing for his dramatic fall. He failed three drug tests by the 1993 season and never returned to the NFL.

Marv and Todd’s mother eventually divorced. Marv remarried and had Mikhail. And though he raised Mikhail similarly to the way he raised Todd, he eliminated the most severe aspects.

He didn’t try to toughen Mikhail by paying someone $200 to beat him up, like he did with Todd.

‘My dad’s made some mistakes, people would say about my brother,’ Mikhail said. ‘But he’s really done the right thing with me.’

But even with those changes and more of a social life than Todd had, Mikhail was in danger of going down the same crooked path as his brother.

In California, he drew plenty of attention because of his last name. Middle school referees taunted him. Parents warned their kids to stay away. The media always had an eye on him.

All the scrutiny pushed him to look at colleges on the East Coast, where he eventually landed at Syracuse after a year at Milford Academy in New Berlin, N.Y. With the media attention significantly diminished, Mikhail started life as a college freshman.

After enrolling a semester early to participate in spring football, he and a teammate were arrested for allegedly breaking into the Manley Field House equipment room. The dust settled from the arrest, but Mikhail was in the headlines again when he and another teammate opened a hookah bar on Marshall Street.

‘I was more in my experimenting kind of stage, just trying to have fun, not focusing on my priorities in life,’ Mikhail said. ‘I got distracted by coming out here and having freedom.’

But since then, Mikhail has matured. He re-prioritized his life after talks with his dad, his wife and head coach Doug Marrone.

His focus is now on blowing past opposing offensive linemen with the speed that was hatched in his unusual youth.

‘Mikhail at times may be a little quirky with the way he does things,’ SU defensive ends coach Tim Daoust said. ‘But he is a productive kid. He’s faster than maybe it appears at times.’

Life as a Jones

Arthur Jones is a defensive tackle for the Baltimore Ravens. Jon Jones was crowned the Ultimate Fighting Championship light heavyweight champion in March. But Chandler Jones — the 6-foot-5-inch, 265-pound specimen that he is — may be the best athlete of the three.

‘I have to say I am the best athlete, all-around,’ he said. ‘Jon, he can’t jump or he can’t catch at all. Art’s just slow, and he has very good hips.

‘I feel like God blessed me with all the gifts that they wish they had.’

The Jones’ high school football coach, Shane Hurd, agrees. And Arthur acknowledges his brother’s freakish athletic ability.

Arthur and Jon only wrestled and played defensive tackle at Union-Endicott (N.Y.) High School. Chandler played basketball, ran the 200-meter dash and played tight end in addition to defensive end for U-E.

Athletically, there are few similarities between him and Mikhail. His speed isn’t quite up to Mikhail’s level, but Chandler’s arsenal is deeper.

There’s also his length and power. Jones can create matchup problems for any left tackle.

‘When he walks through a room, he gets your attention,’ Daoust said. ‘He’s athletic, long, plays the game very smooth.’

That athleticism has been there since he was young.

He joined the varsity football team as a sophomore and lined up at middle linebacker in U-E’s opening scrimmage. On the first play from scrimmage, Shenendehowa (N.Y.) High School’s quarterback rolled right and tucked the ball to run.

The result turned into the opening play for Chandler’s high school highlight tape.

‘Chandler was on a dead sprint and hit this kid so hard, opened up his hips, unlocked and just hit this kid so hard, that every coach on the field ran to the kid,’ Hurd said. ‘Because we thought he killed him. He hit him that hard.’

After three years of varsity football, Chandler followed Arthur to Syracuse. But the athleticism wasn’t enough to get him on the field as a freshman. He needed to learn his position and the defensive scheme, which he did from the coaching staff and his big brother.

‘I taught him everything I know,’ Arthur said. ‘When he first got there, he was kind of like a baby giraffe, just all over the place.’

Growing up

Chandler has matured significantly on the football field in his time at SU, and much of it has come from his desire to surpass the success of his brothers.

‘That competitiveness isn’t just on the field with his brothers,’ said Chandler’s roommate, SU running back Antwon Bailey. ‘He wants to do better than Art did. He wants to do better than Jon is doing now.’

Chandler feels like he has grown up, especially over the past year. He doesn’t skip reps in the weight room anymore. He said he has become a better student of the game.

And that dedication, he said, has come from Jon and Arthur.

‘Those guys are always, even on Sundays and Saturdays, they’re always working out,’ Chandler said. ‘And they’d bring me along with them, and I just figured, ‘Oh, these are our days off, why work then?’ And I see why they’re successful — no days off.’

The maturation for Mikhail has come more off the field. He sold the hookah shop before his sophomore season. He married his high school girlfriend just over a year ago. And he’s more focused than he was in the past, when the newfound freedom of being on his own in Syracuse roped him into some sticky situations.

He’s also vowed not to make the same mistakes on a national stage that Todd did.

Others have taken notice.

‘The maturity level in the last two years has been phenomenal to me,’ Marv said. ‘Takes my speech away with the way he’s handled himself and does what he’s supposed to do.’

And it all leaves Syracuse with two grown-up and experienced defensive ends.

On the left side, Mikhail attacks with the speed and quickness he has been developing since the fourth grade. On the right, Chandler breaks down blockers with the freakish athleticism he hopes will push him past the success of his brothers.

And it’s up to opposing offensive coordinators to figure out how to stop them.

‘It’s just a nightmare,’ Chandler said. ‘Because when you’re double-teaming Mikhail, you got to block me. And when you’re double-teaming me, you got to block Mikhail.’

zjbrown@syr.edu

 

Published on August 31, 2011 at 12:00 pm