Tiger Jones Becomes First AFL Receiver To Top 2,000 Yards in Three Seasons

Adam Markowitz
Sunday July 21, 2013

With his 16-yard catch in the third quarter, Tiger Jones became the first man in the history of the Arena Football League to log at least 2,000 receiving yards in a third season in his career. Jones, the leading receiver for the Philadelphia Soul, entered this Week 18 game against the San Jose SaberCats with 1,968 yards and 33 TDs.

Jones has only played in the AFL for five seasons, but he is already 13th in league history with 9,226 receiving yards (entering the game on Saturday). To put that in comparison, the man just behind him in line, Randy Gatewood, played for 12 seasons, while the man right in front of him, Greg Hopkins, played 11 seasons.

Jones though, has been something completely different. In his rookie season with the Georgia Force in 2008, a team that already featured Troy Bergeron, Jones emerged as a huge threat, catching 96passes for 1,214 yards and a team-high 29 TDs. Since then, wherever the man they call Tiger has gone, big time stats have followed. He logged 1,810 yards with the Milwaukee Iron in 2010, and he was a part of an offense that averaged what at the time was a league record 65.2 points per game.

From there, it was off to the Dallas Vigilantes, where he and Derrick Ross stole the show in the Lone Star State. Jones scored 42 TDs that season, picking up a career-best 170 catches for 2,225 yards. That 2011 season was the second best campaign for a receiver in league history, just 147 yards shy of what Rod Windsor put up in his record-breaking season of 2010.

With the Vigilantes going extinct following the 2011 season, Jones headed with his head coach, Clint Dolezel to the City of Brotherly Love to play with the Philadelphia Soul. Again, Jones put up staggering numbers in 2012, putting up 2,010 yards and a career-best 47 TDs. That Philly team went to the ArenaBowl and averaged 68.2 points per game, which still stands as the best mark in AFL history for the time being.

Now, Jones has the hat trick of 2,000-yard seasons, and he once again is leading a Philly team that is peaking at the right time and will be the favorite to come out of the American Conference for ArenaBowl XXVI.

There are only four players in the history of the AFL that have put together a 2,000-yard receiving season, but there is only one that has done in three times. Tiger Jones stands alone, and he is clearly not just one of the best receivers in the game today, but one of the best receivers in the league's history as well.