D’Jimon Jones ‘cut’ by WSU

D’Jimon Jones is no longer on the WSU football team after being dismissed by coach Mike Leach.

“We cut D’Jimon for violating team rules,” Leach said. Characteristically, Leach offered no further explanation.

Although Jones spent his first season redshirting and had yet to see live Pac-12 action, his name came up repeatedly during spring practices, and he was considered a strong candidate replace NFL draft pick Shalom Luani at nickelback, WSU’s hybrid linebacker/safety position.

Jones had a little scrape with the law in June after allegedly peeing in an elevator in a residence hall. However, as The Seattle Times’ Stefanie Loh noted, it doesn’t appear that his standing with the team was in immediate peril — leading one to conclude that something else probably happened between then and now.

Perhaps he failed to comply with some form of team “restitution” following that incident. Perhaps there was something new that violated one of Leach’s big three (stealing, drug use, domestic violence).

We’ll probably never know what it was. What we do know is that a position that was already up in the air just lost its most athletically gifted contender. Jones, the Times’ state male athlete of the year in 2016, would have at least contributed to special teams.

Now, a muddled position gets even more muddled.