June Jones, the coach who helped make the run and shoot a lasting force in football, has died at 73. Run & Shoot Certification announced his passing on Thursday afternoon, but the cause and date of death had not been released.
The news lands with particular force because Jones was never just another coach moving through jobs. He was one of the most innovative offensive minds the game has ever had, and his ideas spread far beyond the teams he led. He was a Portland, Oregon native who played quarterback at Oregon, Hawaii and Portland State before signing with the Atlanta Falcons as an undrafted free agent.
Jones spent five seasons with the Atlanta Falcons from 1977 to 1981, then one season with the CFL's Toronto Argonauts before getting into coaching. He became a graduate assistant under Dick Tomey at Hawaii in 1983, coached receivers for the USFL's Houston Gamblers in 1984 and coordinated the Denver Gold's offense in 1985. He later coached quarterbacks for the Houston Oilers from 1987 to 1988, for the Detroit Lions from 1989 to 1990 and returned to Atlanta in 1991 before being promoted to head coach of the Falcons in 1994.
His time with the Falcons brought mixed results, but it also produced one of the defining seasons of his career. Atlanta went 19-29 in three seasons under Jones, though the 1995 team finished 9-7 and reached a Wild Card trip to Green Bay. After a 3-7 stint as the San Diego Chargers' interim head coach in 1998, he took over a Hawaii program that had gone winless the year before and turned it into a national story.
The Rainbow Warriors went 9-4 in 1999, shared the WAC title and beat Oregon State 23-17 in the Oahu Bowl. That season was the best single-season turnaround in NCAA history at the time, and Jones earned National Coach of the Year honors. At Hawaii, he won 76 games in nine seasons, collected six bowl trips, two WAC titles and three 10-win seasons. The 2007 team finished 12-0, then met Georgia in the Sugar Bowl on January 1, 2008, where Georgia won 41-10. Jones also sent 16 players to the NFL Draft from Manoa and was inducted into the UH Sports Circle of Honor in 2024.
After leaving Hawaii for SMU, he went 1-11 in his first year there, then 7-5 in 2009 and beat Nevada 45-10 in the Hawaii Bowl, SMU's first bowl trip in 25 years. The Mustangs reached four straight bowls under Jones before he resigned two games into the 2014 season, citing personal issues, with a 36-43 record at SMU. He later coached at Kapolei High School in Hawaii, served as athletic director at Saint Louis School in Honolulu, led the CFL's Hamilton Tiger-Cats in 2017 and 2018, and guided the Houston Roughnecks to a 5-0 start in 2020 before the XFL canceled its season because of COVID-19. He was named the XFL's Coach of the Year that year and later served as offensive coordinator for the Seattle Sea Dragons in 2023.
Run & Shoot Certification said it mourns the passing of Jones and described his greatest legacy as the people he believed in and the lives he changed. That is the unfinished measure of his career now: the football is already in the books, but the full account of how he died is still not known.
