Veteran wide receiver Marvin Jones Jr. announced Tuesday that he is stepping away from the Detroit Lions “to take care of personal family matters.”
Jones, who re-signed with the Lions before this season, was inactive for Detroit’s loss to the Baltimore Ravens on Sunday for personal reasons.
“I just want to say that I have so much love and respect for the Ford Family, the city of Detroit, my teammates and coaches,” he wrote in a post to Instagram. “To be brief, I am stepping away from the team to take care of personal family matters. Although this was no easy decision, I cannot be the person/player that I need to be for this team as well as tend to my family from afar.”
In a procedural move after his announcement, the Lions announced they had released Jones. who has five catches for 35 yards in six games this season.
Jones, 33, caught 119 passes for 1,361 yards and seven touchdowns the previous two seasons with the Jacksonville Jaguars. He led the team in receptions (73), receiving yards (832) and receiving touchdowns (four) in 2021.
Before his stint in Jacksonville, he spent four seasons (2016-20) with the Lions and posted his only 1,000-yard season in 2017, when he caught 61 passes for 1,101 yards and led the NFL with 18.0 yards per catch.
He has 547 receptions for 7,421 yards and 58 touchdowns in his 12-season career, which began with the Cincinnati Bengals, who selected him in the fifth round of the 2012 draft.
