Pacman Jones’s Complicated Legacy: Drug Tests, Legal Woes, and Raising Future Stars

Adam “Pacman” Jones is making news for all the wrong reasons again, discussing how he never used his own urine during NFL drug tests conducted under the league’s substance abuse policy. “I’ve never used my piss for a piss test. Not one time,” Mr. Jones said this week during a podcast hosted by Deion Sanders.His comments shouldn’t qualify as shocking from someone suspended multiple times during a 12-year NFL career as a cornerback and return specialist that ended in 2018. Selected in the first-round of the 2005 draft by the Tennessee Titans, Mr. Jones was suspended for 22 of a possible 28 games during one stretch, and questioned by police in eight separate incidents, including a 2007 shooting outside of a Las Vegas nightclub that left a man paralyzed.The reflection on how he cheated his drug tests went viral this week and only reinforced his image as the NFL’s ultimate bad boy, which he was for the early part of his career. Yet it ignores his slow journey of redemption, which includes becoming the adoptive father to two sons of his college teammate Chris Henry Sr., who was killed in a vehicular accident in 2009 at the age of 26.Mr. Jones, 41, has shared life lessons and his football acumen to develop Chris Henry Jr. into the No. 1 receiver in the 2026 college recruiting class. The 6-foot-6, 205-pounder from Mater Dei High School at Santa Ana, California, has offers from Ohio State, Michigan, Georgia, USC, West Virginia, and most recently Colorado, among others. Mr. Jones is also raising DeMarcus Henry, a 6-foot-6 basketball talent in his sophomore year of high school.“I’ll tell you this,” Mr. Jones told the Athletic. “I’ll be damned if these kids make the same mistakes I did.”He has plenty of mistakes from which to choose. In 2007, he was suspended for one year for violation of the NFL’s player conduct policy, the first time in 44 years a player was suspended for something other than substance abuse. After being traded to the Dallas Cowboys in 2008, he was suspended again for an altercation at a Dallas hotel. In January 2009, the Cowboys released Mr. Jones after he was connected to a 2007 shooting outside a strip club at Atlanta.With his career in shambles, Mr. Jones made the most of a tryout with the Cincinnati Bengals and initially signed a two-year deal in 2010. He would spend eight years with the Bengals with the only blip being a one-game suspension in 2017 for again violating the league’s personal conduct policy by being arrested for disorderly conduct.Trouble still tends to follow Mr. Jones. As recently as November 2024, he was arrested in AT&T Stadium at Arlington, Texas, for getting into a fight in a stadium bar following the Jake Paul-Mike Tyson bout.While Mr. Jones, who also dabbled in professional wrestling and the music business, might not be the ultimate role model, he has taken a “do as I say, not as I do” approach with his adopted children.Mr. Jones and Chris Henry Sr., were teammates at West Virginia. After Mr. Jones went in the first round to the Titans, Henry, who was a gifted wide receiver, was a third-round choice of the Bengals.Upon Henry’s tragic death, Mr. Jones stayed in touch with the boys, taking them to football camps and sending them athletic gear. Eventually, the boys moved in with him and his other four children in 2021 and Mr. Jones became their legal guardian.Driven to help the boys succeed and not make the mistakes he made, Mr. Jones became a home-school coach. He awakened them for daily 6 a.m. workouts to practice running routes, lift weights, and watch film to learn techniques. Chris Henry Jr., has taken all the instruction and advice to heart, developing into the kind of prospect that college coaches are fighting over.“I actually think he’s going to be better than his dad,” Mr. Jones said.

Pacman Jones’s Complicated Legacy: Drug Tests, Legal Woes, and Raising Future Stars

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