Jerry Jones revealed in the new Netflix documentary, America’s Team: The Gambler and His Cowboys, that he overcame stage 4 melanoma more than a decade ago.
Cowboys coach Brian Schottenheimer said Wednesday that he is “glad” Jerry shared his diagnosis and treatment to give people “hope.”
“It gives people the strength to say ‘Hey, you can beat this,’” Schottenheimer said, via video from the team.
Schottenheimer, 51, then for the first time shared his own cancer diagnosis at age 28. He showed the scar where doctors removed 17 lymph nodes to rid him of thyroid cancer.
“I knew I had lump in my throat. I knew there was something bothering me, but I didn’t think it was anything,” said Schottenheimer, who now is cancer-free.
Schottenheimer had just finished a training camp practice more than two decades ago when he received a message to call his doctor. He knew it was bad news and, after hearing it from the doctor, went to tell his father, Marty, who immediately called former Washington owner Dan Synder.
Snyder previously had beaten thyroid cancer.
“I broke down. [Marty Schottneheimer] said, ‘We’ll figure this out and get the best help we can get,’” Schottenheimer said. “He picked up the phone and called Dan Snyder, a guy that two years before had fired him. . . . I’ll never forget: He told me when Dan picked up the phone, and my dad said to him, ‘Hey, Dan, I have a problem; Brian has cancer.’ Dan said, ‘Marty, give me 5 minutes, and I’ll call you back,’ and I think it was within 24 to 36 hours that I was on the operating table [at the Mayo Clinic] in Rochester, Minnesota. Again, it just shows you when you’re dealing with things like that, everything competitively stops.”
Schottenheimer said it was “traumatic” to hear the c-word and to contemplate the unknown.
“Mine was nothing as serious as [Jones’ cancer diagnosis],” Schottenheimer said. “Thyroid cancer is the slowest growing cancer in the world. I was actually more concerned about when I had to have the surgery that I could lose my ability to speak, and I was a coach. They’re [operating] around your vocal cords. [Former Bengals and Bucs] Sam Wyche actually had something like that happen to him. . . . It kind of reminds you of what truly matters.”
Schottenheimer said that without his position in the NFL and for Synder, his story could have turned out differently.
