NFL Star Chandler Jones Arrested After Making Accusations About the Las Vegas Raiders
An NFL star’s public and downward spiral took another dramatic turn early Thursday morning.
Las Vegas Raiders pass rusher Chandler Jones, who has also starred for the New England Patriots and Arizona Cardinals, was arrested by local authorities before being booked into Clark County Detention Center in Nevada around midnight, according to TMZ.
Jones was reportedly still behind bars as of this publishing.
While no official cause for the arrest was initially given, TMZ cited unnamed sources who claimed that the Pro Bowl linebacker violated some sort of protective order, so police responded and arrested him.
Jail records obtained by ESPN confirmed that Jones allegedly violated a domestic violence temporary protective order, and was held on $15,000 bail.
A different law enforcement source told TMZ that Jones was cooperative during the whole ordeal.
Despite the relatively uneventful nature of the arrest, the same can’t be said about the firestorm of events that led up to this most recent incident.
Earlier in September, Jones made some bizarre allegations that he had been locked out of team facilities and that the Raiders had sent a crisis response team to his home.
Jones claimed that the crisis response team told him that he was “in danger.”
That incident immediately cast doubt on Jones’ future with the team, and he has yet to play a snap this year for the 1-2 Raiders.
Those doubts were intensified on Monday when, in since-deleted social media posts, Jones claimed that the Las Vegas Fire Department had hospitalized him against his will, and that he had been injected with an unknown substance.
“I was injected with I don’t know what,” he wrote in the deleted post.
Just a few days after that incident, on Thursday, Jones again took to social media in since-deleted posts to make some truly bizarre and wild claims with nary a shred of evidence to back them up.
Perhaps most alarmingly, as the New York Post noted, Jones implied that Raiders head coach Josh McDaniels played some role in the death of former Patriots tight end Aaron Hernandez.
Hernandez was arrested in 2013 and convicted in the murder of a known associate in 2015. He was acquitted of a separate double homicide charge, when just a day later, he was found dead in his jail cell on April 19, 2017. The death was ultimately ruled a suicide.
“Y’all don’t know what Josh McDaniels really did to Aaron Hernandez,” Jones said in the deleted social media post, according to the Post. “Y’all thought Aaron Hernandez killed himself in jail.”
The Raiders have put out an official statement on the entire ordeal:
— Las Vegas Raiders (@Raiders) September 29, 2023
“The Raiders are hopeful that Chandler Jones receives the care that he needs,” the Raiders statement reads. “He, his family, and all those involved are in our thoughts. As this is now a legal matter, we will not be providing further comment.”
Jones, when fully engaged and healthy, was one of the league’s premier sack artists for a number of years.
He currently sits at 112 career sacks, tied for 26th place on the NFL’s all-time sacks list. In fact, only two active players, the Buffalo Bills’ Von Miller and New Orleans Saints’ Cam Jordan, have more than Jones right now.
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