The Detroit Lions don’t appear to be too concerned about the availability of cornerback Terrion Arnold, despite some perceived ties to robbery incident that has already resulted in six arrests.
During this week’s owners meetings in Arizona, head coach Dan Campbell said that based on conversations they’ve had with Arnold themselves and the information they have, they don’t current believe the Lions’ third-year cornerback will be facing legal trouble.
“We got all the information that says he wasn’t involved,” Campbell said. “That’s what we know, that’s all we know. And I mean, that’s really all I can say. I mean, we’re monitoring what’s out there. I mean, as of a month ago, this was nothing. So I have no idea what this is. As far as I know it’s still not a big deal, it seems like he wasn’t involved with this.”
In February, an alleged kidnapping and robbery took place in a Florida apartment. Prosecutors paint the crime as a retaliation for a robbery that took place in Arnold’s AirBNB. Last week, text messages that were sent during the incident were released to the public, and Arnold’s name was mentioned nine times by the alleged perpetrators, potentially linking him as a co-conspirator. However, Arnold’s attorney Tim Jansen believes those texts prove nothing, and maintain Arnold’s non-involvement in the alleged crime.
“Claims that Mr. Arnold was ‘at the center’ of text message communications related to this incident are entirely misleading and reflect a gross negligence in accurately reporting the facts,” Jansen wrote in a public statement. “In reality, the collection of messages in question consists of more than 300 individual texts. Within that volume, Mr. Arnold’s name appears only a handful of times, approximately five, and only in passing references by third parties. At no point do these messages demonstrate that Mr. Arnold was directly involved in any conversations related to the alleged conduct.”
Team president Rod Wood told the Detroit Free Press that they met with Arnold in person after the allegations went public, and they “grilled” him about the situation.
Last week during an appearance on the Lions Collective podcast, Lions general manager Brad Holmes didn’t have much to say about the incident, but did mention he likes to prepare for all possibilities when an incident like this arises.
“I’m just more of a—let’s call it a pessimistic planner. I just like to prepare myself for that,” Holmes said. “I’m not saying that something is going to come out the worst, but that’s how I prepare on all situations, but also I always hope for the best, as well.”
This offseason, the Lions were able to re-sign cornerback Rock Ya-Sin while adding versatile defensive back pieces in Roger McCreary and Christian Izien. Campbell believes that leaves Detroit’s cornerback room in a good place.
“Getting Rock back was big for us. That’s not why (we signed him)—what happens if—that wasn’t the thought. But if it happens that way (with Terrion), or you talk about insurance, certainly we’ll need to be able to fill in somewhere with depth,” Campbell said. “But, look, we’ve still got (D.J.) Reed, we like (Ennis) Rake(straw). Rake’s coming back. I know it’s unproven right now, but he’s had a good offseason to this point. And we’ve got Rock, and McCreary. So we’ve got some things there.”
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