Jerry Jones and the Dallas Cowboys are the subject of the Netflix documentary series America’s Team: The Gambler and His Cowboys. During the fifth episode of the show, the owner revealed that he underwent treatment at the MD Anderson Cancer Center “about a dozen years ago.”
Jerry Jones Reveals Major Medical Scare
Jones didn’t go into too many details at the time, but was later asked for further details by the Dallas Morning News and revealed that he had stage 4 melanoma in 2010. At stage 4, cancer has spread to other organs. For melanoma, that can be the brain, lungs, liver, or gastrointestinal tract.
“I was saved by a fabulous treatment and great doctors and a real miracle [drug] called PD-1 [therapy],” Jones said. “I went into trials for that PD-1 and it has been one of the great medicines.”
Per the News, PD-1 means Programmed Cell Death Protein 1. The therapy helps the immune system “fight cancer cells by blocking PD-1, thus enabling T cells to better recognize and destroy cancer cells.”
The Cowboys owner revealed he’s cancer free as a result of the treatment, “I now have no tumors.”
Why Did Jones Reveal the Health Scare?
According to NBC Sports, Jones explained he was given this advice by a doctor at MD Anderson: “You need to do a lot of meditation. Make a list of 10 people who can just boil your blood. Start with the one at the top and wish for them the greatest things you can wish for. . . . At No. 1, I wrote down the name ‘Jimmy Johnson.’”
When asked who else made the list, jones revealed to his doctor a few weeks later that “‘I can’t get past that first mother.’”
He and Johnson eventually buried the hatchet as the latter was inducted into the Cowboys Ring of Honor in 2023.
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