Lions wide receiver Marvin Jones had a quiet game on Thursday night against the Chiefs, catching just two balls for eight yards, but he definitely impressed viewers who were watching NBC’s Spanish-language coverage of the game.
After the game, Jones conducted an interview with Telemundo’s Ariana Figuera—and he did the whole thing in fluent Spanish. My Spanish isn’t as good as Jones’s, but he spoke about beating the Chiefs at Arrowhead Stadium, his second-quarter fumble and where the team hopes to go from here. He sounded completely natural speaking in his second language.
Marvin Jones condujo toda su entrevista con NBC Universo en español. pic.twitter.com/YK4xqnKHvz
— Timothy Burke (@bubbaprog) September 8, 2023
Jones has been working for years to hone his Spanish skills. He told MLive.com in 2016 that he had been studying the language on and off for a few years.
“I took Spanish for two years in high school, and it’s just something that is very useful, especially in today’s time,” Jones said. There’s a lot of Latin people in this [country], and they’re growing at a rapid rate and stuff. I grew up around a lot of Latinos [in Los Angeles] and stuff like that, so just to know a language—just to know a language so that when I come across somebody who speaks Spanish, I can directly connect with them.”
Before the 2017 season, Jones attended a five-day language immersion class in Málaga, Spain, according to ESPN, and he took hourlong individual online classes four days a week when he returned.
In 2019, Jones told The Athletic that he planned to relocate his family to Spain for a few months in the offseason, in part to immerse his kids in the language.
Jones’s hard work at learning the language has paid off, allowing him to smoothly conduct interviews, like the one with Figuera and another with ESPN’s John Sutcliffe last season, in his second language.
