{"id":604682,"date":"2026-04-13T19:09:08","date_gmt":"2026-04-13T19:09:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/604682\/"},"modified":"2026-04-13T19:09:08","modified_gmt":"2026-04-13T19:09:08","slug":"former-nfl-cornerback-chris-payton-jones-dies-at-30-everyone-loved-him-nfl","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/604682\/","title":{"rendered":"Former NFL cornerback Chris Payton-Jones dies at 30: \u2018Everyone loved him\u2019 | NFL"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"dcr-130mj7b\">Former <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/sport\/nfl\" data-link-name=\"in body link\" data-component=\"auto-linked-tag\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">NFL<\/a> cornerback Chris Payton-Jones died in a car accident Saturday night in Florida. He was 30.<\/p>\n<p class=\"dcr-130mj7b\">Payton-Jones was driving a sedan eastbound in the westbound lanes of State Road 24 in Gainesville when his vehicle collided head-on with a pickup truck, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.news4jax.com\/sports\/2026\/04\/12\/one-of-my-all-time-favorites-friends-coaches-recall-impact-of-chris-payton-jones\/\" data-link-name=\"in body link\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">according to News 4 Jacksonville<\/a>. The three people in the truck sustained only minor injuries.<\/p>\n<p class=\"dcr-130mj7b\">Payton-Jones\u2019s car overturned and burst into flames. He was pronounced dead at the scene.<\/p>\n<p class=\"dcr-130mj7b\">Payton-Jones, a native of the Jacksonville area, was known as Chris Jones when he played college football at Nebraska from 2014-17. Unselected in the 2018 NFL draft, he went on to appear in 29 regular-season games with the Arizona Cardinals, Detroit Lions, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/sport\/minnesota-vikings\" data-link-name=\"in body link\" data-component=\"auto-linked-tag\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Minnesota Vikings<\/a> and Tennessee Titans from 2018-21. He later moved on to the Seattle Sea Dragons of the XFL in 2023, and spent the past two seasons with the St Louis Battlehawks of the UFL.<\/p>\n<p class=\"dcr-130mj7b\">\u201cThe kid never missed a workout, never missed practice, and never wanted to come off the field. Everyone loved him,\u201d his high school football coach, Ada Geis, told News 4 Jacksonville. \u201cHe was always unbelievably positive. I\u2019ve never heard that kid ever say anything negative about anyone or anything. \u2026 It was always a pleasure to be around him. You were always happy to see him.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"dcr-130mj7b\">Payton-Jones retired in January and made his side business of content creation a full-time job. His video content, primarily sports-related, has more than 1m views on his YouTube site, Flashflix. He was also a keen mentor of young videographers looking to find their way into sports media.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Former NFL cornerback Chris Payton-Jones died in a car accident Saturday night in Florida. He was 30. Payton-Jones&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":604683,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[559],"tags":[64,63,593,85],"class_list":{"0":"post-604682","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-nfl","8":"tag-au","9":"tag-australia","10":"tag-nfl","11":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/604682","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=604682"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/604682\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/604683"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=604682"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=604682"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=604682"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}