Matt Jones explains being tackled by his dreadlocks

Washington Post reporter and ur-sports blogger Dan Steinberg is consistently a font for truly interesting and off-kilter stories about sports. So, after Florida star turned Washington rookie Matt Jones was tackled by Philadelphia's Fletcher Cox partly because Cox yanked on Jones's dreadlocks last Sunday, it's no surprise that Steinberg was all over the story.

What is surprising? Jones's shrug of a reaction.

"He just grabbed a handful of my hair," Jones recalled. "I just felt the whole momentum of it, of him pulling my hair, but it didn’t hurt or nothing. It happened to me one time in college; I didn’t feel that one either. I don’t know, I don’t guess [Cox] pulled it hard enough or something. I just didn’t feel it. My neck was a little sore after the game, though. Probably because of that, I think."

I don't have hair nearly as long as Jones does, and I'm only very rarely in situations wherein incredibly strong men might pull my hair, but I really don't think "it didn't hurt or nothing" or "I just didn't feel it" would be part of my response to having my hair pulled, so, uh, good for you, Matt.

Steinberg's story has some great protestations of that proclamation of "meh" from lineman Ricky Jean-Francois, and you really should read it. But he also caps it with this shrugging way forward, described by Jones:

Jones said he wasn’t sure what would happen next. He said the incident "makes you think" about a trim, "but I don’t think I’m going to cut it," he added.

"I think I’ll just put it in another style or something. Just braid it together. It’s still going to be out, but it’ll be kind of harder [to grab]. Because these, you can grab these easy. But it’s going to be in a bigger braid-type style, so that’s probably what I’l do…..I’ll probably just put it in a different style. That’s about it."

Matt Jones is quite literally the embodiment of "Long hair, don't care."