Cowboys’ Jones: Experimental drug saved my life (0:48)
Cowboys’ Jones: Experimental drug saved my life (0:48)
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Todd ArcherAug 13, 2025, 11:29 AM ET
- Todd Archer is an NFL reporter at ESPN and covers the Dallas Cowboys. Archer has covered the NFL since 1997 and Dallas since 2003. He joined ESPN in 2010.
OXNARD, Calif. — Dallas Cowboys owner Jerry Jones said in an interview that he dealt with stage 4 melanoma and an experimental trial drug saved his life.
In the fifth episode of the Netflix documentary “America’s Team: The Gambler and His Cowboys” that debuts next week, Jones, 82, talked about undergoing cancer treatments at MD Anderson in Houston. However, he didn’t reveal details of the treatment and what it was for.
“I was saved by a fabulous treatment and great doctors and a real miracle [drug] called PD-1 [therapy],” Jones told The Dallas Morning News on Tuesday. “I went into trials for that PD-1, and it has been one of the great medicines. I now have no tumors.”
Jones told the paper he was diagnosed in June 2010 and began treatment soon thereafter. Over the next 10 years, he said he had two lung surgeries and two lymph node surgeries. Stage 4 melanoma refers to skin cancer that has metastasized to other parts of the body.
According to the American Cancer Society, PD-1 therapy — or programmed cell death-1 — helps “the immune system recognize, and attack cancer cells.”
A stage 4 melanoma diagnosis used to almost always be fatal and treatment aimed merely to slow the disease, control symptoms and possibly extend survival. But recent medical advancements — including immunotherapies and targeted checkpoint inhibitors that help the body’s T-cells fight off the cancer — have given hope that the disease may be brought under control for years.
Advanced cases can have a five-year survival rate of about 50%, with some even longer and some having no signs of the cancer after treatment.
MD Anderson is world-renowned for cancer treatment and clinical trials.
The PD-1 therapy treatment came to light after Jones was told that meditation would serve him well and to list 10 people who, “boil your blood,” and wish them well. Jones wrote down the name of his former head coach, Jimmy Johnson, first.
Visiting the doctor not long after he was asked how the meditation was helping, and he said, with a slight smile, “I can’t get past that first mother …”
The Netflix series documents Jones’ purchase of the Cowboys, the firing of Tom Landry, the hiring of Johnson as well as the rise of the 1990s Cowboys, interspersing it with Jones’ life story.
ABC News contributed to this report.
