TAMPA, Fla. -- The resurrection of Tampa Bay Buccaneers defensive end Marcus Jones, both body and soul, began with a simple phone call home to mama a couple years ago.

Bivouacked in his dormitory room at the University of Tampa on the eve of the Bucs' 1999 training camp -- and realizing that his zeal for the game had abandoned him and that his motivational gas tank was on empty, Jones crawled out of bed in the middle of the night and sought the counsel of a mother with whom his relationship had fractured a bit.

	Defensive end Marcus Jones broke out with a career-best 13 sacks in 2000.

At home in Jacksonville, N.C., Emma Thomas listened bleary-eared to her son's tale of despair and self-pity and finally issued this pithy panacea to her boy: Pray, son, pray.

It was, Jones recalled of that evening, a mental exercise he had not undertaken since he was 9, a stretch of 17 years. What you don't use, you lose, and Marcus Jones had long since forgotten any of the formal prayers he had learned by rote as a youngster.

Lucky for him, and eventually for the Bucs as well, Jones rediscovered an old formula and began just talking aloud to God.

"I didn't know what to say and I certainly didn't know how to say it," said Jones, after a day of combined practices with the Miami Dolphins here. "So I remember, after a while, I just said, 'God, please just help me to help myself.' Since I hadn't prayed in so long, it really didn't seem fair to put it all on him, I didn't think. I was just hoping he could give me a little push in the right direction."

The next morning, as if flipping a light switch, Jones went out for the morning practice with new determination and renewed appreciation for the game.

Two years after the incident, nearly 30 months after the Bucs thought so little of their 1996 first-round pick that they left Jones unprotected in the '99 expansion draft to stock the Cleveland Browns roster, he is a star on the rise.

Jones is arguably the least-known performer on one of the league's highest-profile defensive front fours. Everyone knows Warren Sapp and Simeon Rice. Because of his stellar 2000 season in his first year as a starter, Anthony McFarland is regarded as an emerging star. Beyond the front four, Derrick Brooks is perhaps the game's premier weakside linebacker, Donnie Abraham a terrific cover cornerback, strong safety John Lynch an incomparable hitter.

But despite 13 sacks in 2000, five more than he had posted in the previous four seasons combined, Jones operates in relative anonymity.

He could be even better in 2001, moving to his more natural left end position to create a spot for Rice on the weakside and where he will replace the departed Chidi Ahanotu, but the media hordes that have beaten a path to the Bucs camp haven't exactly besieged Jones for interview requests.

Which seems fine with Jones, an engaging and colorful guy, but one who has no problem in accepting Sapp as the chief spokesman's role.

"It's quite a story, a guy going from first-round bust to a really great player," Tampa Bay general manager Rich McKay said. "I don't know what you trace it to, but he has really turned it around."

In addition to his improvisational supplication on the eve of '99 camp, Jones was married and became a first-time father that same year. Early in camp, defensive line assistant coach Rod Marinelli, unaware that a player who had been the source of frustration was about to turn things around, all but validated Jones' parking ticket out of Tampa.

	“	I was the spare part, the guy who gave everyone else a breather. I wasn't even treading water. I was out there in the ocean, with weights tied to both legs. But then the turnaround came. Suddenly, it was like I saw the light again. All of a sudden I loved football again. ”
		— Marcus Jones, Bucs defensive end

"He told me if I just worked hard that, when they cut me, the coaches would put in a good word for me with other teams, so maybe someone would pick me up," Jones said. "I was running fourth-string at that point, behind Chidi and Tyoka Jackson and Ralph Hughes and, as you know, they don't even have a fourth-string in the NFL. I was the spare part, the guy who gave everyone else a breather. I wasn't even treading water. I was out there in the ocean, with weights tied to both legs. But then the turnaround came. Suddenly, it was like I saw the light again. All of a sudden I loved football again."

Such tales of epiphany, of course, characteristically turn out to be apocryphal. But look into Jones' eyes, listen to a deep but still soft voice that seems unnatural emanating from such a big man whose dreadlocks make him appear even more menacing, and you realize that his sincerity is not fabricated.

Jones, 27, is not a religious zealot, not a Bible-thumper attempting to proselytize those with whom he shares a locker room. He is an engaging and articulate man, a player who was candid even with a reporter he was meeting for the first time. The improvement as a player has mirrored his growth as a person.

The son of a 30-year career Marine officer, Jones was raised in a fairly rigid environment, where wearing his school clothes or his Sunday-best shoes out to play usually earned him a stern rebuke. Or worse. The discipline served him well through Southwest Onslow High School and at North Carolina, where he earned All-America honors and actually lived up to the now-obsolete term "student-athlete."

That's why it is so difficult to fathom that, through the first four seasons of his career at the professional level, Jones lost his focus.

Asked if he strayed because of the money that accompanies first-round status, or maybe because the overall lifestyle can precipitate culture shock, Jones laughed and shook his head. He noted that it was a combination of events, none of them sinister, but the sum of which left him more directionless than he had ever been in his life.

"The best way to put it," Jones said, "is that I just wasn't very professional. You want the truth? I just had my head up my (butt)."

That he has become a major pain in the, uh, butt, for NFL linemen might seem ironic to some, but Bucs coach Tony Dungy sees it more as validation of Jones' newfound work ethic. And, just as much, it serves as a reminder that sometimes teams can be too hasty in giving up on a player who doesn't offer immediate results.

"From a first-rounder in particular, you're always looking for instant production," Dungy said. "You get maybe a year and a half into their careers and, if they're not playing up to what you thought they would be, you start to question whether they ever will. There was a little bit of that with Marcus, certainly from our end. We got impatient. But now he's paying off for us. And he's going to get even better this year. We've found the right place for him now."

That is certainly not meant to diminish what Jones accomplished in 2000 while playing right end. But that spot is, in theory, designed for a speed-rusher of Rice's ilk. Jones will have to confront more double-team blocking on the strong side and will get chip-blocked by tight ends and fullbacks, but he might even put up better numbers than a year ago.

Although the left end must still anchor against the run, the position has been redefined some in recent seasons to allow for more sacks from the strong side. Two years ago, strongside end Kevin Carter of St. Louis led the NFL in sacks. Last year, there were just as many left ends as right ends among the NFL's top 10 sack men. The 6-foot-6, 278-pound Jones, who learned to handle double-team, in-line blocking while playing defensive tackle at North Carolina, has bulked up by about five pounds.

Unlike two years ago, when he wasn't sure he even wanted to play anymore, he finds himself looking forward to every practice. Yeah, even during the two-a-day sessions.

"When I was struggling," he said, "all I was trying to do was hold on. I took it day-to-day. My whole focus was, 'OK, I don't care if I make a play, but, please, don't let me make a mistake.' My whole mindset was on not failing instead of being on succeeding. Everything is so much more positive now, you know? I hope people keep overlooking me because that doesn't bother me at all. I went from having a mentality that just was not football-honed to being very focused.

"And, I'll tell you what, this way is a lot more fun."

Len Pasquarelli is a senior NFL writer for ESPN.com.