{"id":652141,"date":"2026-01-04T02:11:12","date_gmt":"2026-01-04T02:11:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/652141\/"},"modified":"2026-01-04T02:11:12","modified_gmt":"2026-01-04T02:11:12","slug":"clemson-football-starting-safety-ricardo-jones-enters-transfer-portal","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/652141\/","title":{"rendered":"Clemson football starting safety Ricardo Jones enters transfer portal"},"content":{"rendered":"

CLEMSON \u2014 Clemson football<\/a> starting safety Ricardo Jones announced Jan. 3 that he is entering the transfer portal<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Jones became a starter in his second season with the Tigers, recording 39 tackles, a conference-high six interceptions and nine pass deflections in 13 games (12 starts) this season to earn third-team All-ACC honors. In his two-year Clemson<\/a> career, he had 59 tackles, seven interceptions and 10 pass deflections in 25 games.<\/p>\n

Advertisement<\/p>\n

He has two years of eligibility remaining.<\/p>\n

Jones, a highly regarded player for Clemson coach Dabo Swinney, is the third Tigers safety to enter the portal, joining Khalil Barnes (starter) and Rob Billings.<\/p>\n

These losses are on top of Clemson suffering two safety decommitments in its 2026 recruiting class and safeties coach Mickey Conn getting fired on Dec. 29<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Now, safety becomes a higher transfer portal need for Clemson. The portal closes Jan. 15.<\/p>\n

Clemson has seven scholarship safeties: Ronan Hanafin, Kylon Griffin, Kylen Webb, Noah Dixon, Joe Wilkinson, Jakarrion Kenan and freshman Polo Anderson.<\/p>\n

Derrian Carter covers Clemson athletics for The Greenville News and the USA TODAY Network. Email him at\u00a0DCarter@usatodayco.com<\/a>\u00a0and follow him on X, formerly known as Twitter, @DerrianCarter00<\/p>\n

This article originally appeared on Greenville News: Ricardo Jones, Clemson starting safety, enters transfer portal<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"CLEMSON \u2014 Clemson football starting safety Ricardo Jones announced Jan. 3 that he is entering the transfer portal.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":652142,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2026],"tags":[2819,382,7,94745,94743,94741,94742,94744,790,4156],"class_list":["post-652141","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-football","tag-clemson-football","tag-dabo-swinney","tag-football","tag-joe-wilkinson","tag-khalil-barnes","tag-ricardo-jones","tag-rob-billings","tag-ronan-hanafin","tag-tigers","tag-transfer-portal"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/652141","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=652141"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/652141\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/652142"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=652141"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=652141"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=652141"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}