Negotiations for Jones Wrapped Up on Lake, in Restaurant
Certainly, Jon Robinson is thankful to have acquired seven-time Pro Bowl wide receiver Julio Jones in a trade with the Atlanta Falcons on Sunday. He may be even more thankful for the strong cellular service that made it possible.
The Tennessee Titans general manager said that discussions about the trade went for as many as two weeks. Those talks intensified over the weekend when Robinson and his family had plans to enjoy some “quiet” time together. His parents, who he says he had not seen in about a year, were in town for a visit.
In a pair of media appearances Wednesday, Robinson detailed the role modern communication played in the transaction.
“Really, Sunday morning is when it kind of finalized at (a) favorite spot of mine, Pinewood Kitchen out in Pinewood, Tenn. It’s probably about an hour west of (Nashville),” Robinson said on NFL Network’s Good Morning Football. “… We were out having brunch, the phone rang again, and we really crystalized a deal at now-historic Pinewood Kitchen, the place where the trade for Julio Jones went down.”
That call came after multiple discussions the preceding day, including one when Robinson and his family were not even on dry land. On SiriusXM NFL Radio, he said he was on a pontoon boat on Percy Priest Lake, which is 10 miles east of Nashville, when Falcons general manager Terry Fontenot reached out to him.
“... We were going to putz around out there and chill and let my daughters splash around and all of that stuff,” Robinson said. “... Thank goodness the cell towers extend out over the water. … We talked a couple of times there out on the water and kept the dialogue going. Thank God for cell phones and cell service that you can continue to do NFL business … even when you’re enjoying a little family time out on the lake.”
Ahead of his trip to the lake, Robinson said he told Fontenot to feel free to call him if he needed, and the first-year Falcons general manager took that to heart.
The Jones trade is the first of Fontenot’s career. The Falcons hired him this year after 18 seasons in the New Orleans Saints’ scouting and personnel departments and presented him a roster mired in salary cap issues. Trading away Jones will allow Atlanta to sign all of its picks in this year’s draft.
Robinson praised the 40-year-old for his professionalism throughout the process.
“At the end of the day, I appreciated dealing with Terry,” Robinson said. “This is his first time in the chair there as the GM of the Falcons. Like I try to do, I try to be as transparent as possible. You have to have a little bit of a poker face when you’re going through these things.
“... But when you’re getting really close to pulling the trigger on a deal, you want to have some trust back and forth. And I felt that with Terry, and Terry felt that with me. It was a really seamless deal to work through with him.”
Thanks to some fully functioning cell towers.
