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Adam “Pacman” Jones had a lot of trouble staying out of trouble during his time in the NFL, and while he was suspended multiple times, none of those punishments stemmed from the marijuana habit he’s been very transparent about since retiring. Now, we know how he managed to avoid failing a drug test after he shared the strategy he deployed with Deion Sanders.
Nothing sums up the tumultuous career Pacman Jones had in the NFL better than the fact that his Wikipedia page notes he’s been “arrested more times than any other NFL player in the 21st century,” a list that includes incidents where he:
- Spat on a woman in a nightclub
- Spat on a different woman in a different nightclub
- Ended up involved in a shooting at a strip club that left a former pro wrestler paralyzed
- Was Charged with hitting a woman at a different strip club
- Fought his own bodyguard at a hotel
Those issues led to him being suspended multiple times by both the teams he played for and the NFL; the latter banned him for the entirety of the 2007 season in the wake of the shooting (he agreed to a plea deal that allowed him to avoid any jail time) and another four games the following year for the bodyguard spat.
Jones was also charged with the possession of marijuana in 2006 before the case was dropped, but he has not been shy about talking about his affinity for that particular substance during his time in the league; he’s admitted to sparking up before games and said he used weed to help him tackle the stress he was dealt with during his career.
NFL players can still be fined and suspended for failing a drug test, but the league has relaxed its policy in recent years to the point where you really need to screw up if you’re forced to sit out a game due to marijuana use (screenings for THC are only administered once a year during a small window toward the start of training camp, but guys can be forced to enter a program where they’re subjected to random ones if they fail).
When you consider Jones has framed himself as a habitual smoker, it’s kind of shocking weed wasn’t the source of one of his suspensions. However, he recently shed light on the strategy he used to avoid that fate: cheating.
According to USA Today, Jones came clean during a conversation with Deion Sanders on We Got Time Today where he acknowledged he deployed a tried and true strategy to make sure he never failed a urine test by sourcing his from other people, saying:
“I cheated the program. Like I was really good. People don’t know how smart I am, but like, I can say it now. I don’t play no more.
I’ve never used my piss for a piss test. Not one time. Not one time.”
Jones ultimately played 12 seasons in the NFL despite the many issues he encountered during that span, and based on how puritanical the league was in its approach to weed during his playing days, I can’t necessarily blame him for gaming the system to avoid even more headaches.