Ex-Detroit Lions WR Jace Billingsley: 'I don't agree with ... the way' Lions treat players

Dave Birkett | Detroit Free Press

Show Caption Hide Caption Why Detroit Lions' loss on Thanksgiving felt different, yet familiar Dave Birkett and Carlos Monarrez share their thoughts after the Detroit Lions' 24-20 loss to the Chicago Bears on Thursday, Nov. 28, 2019.

Jace Billingsley, the former Detroit Lions wide receiver who retired from the NFL last year to pursue a career in music, said he used a still photo of Lions general manager Bob Quinn and president Rod Wood in a recent music video wearing clown noses as commentary on “people that take business more seriously than they do … personal relationships.”

“I don’t think Bob and Rod are bad people,” Billingsley said in a text message. “But I don’t agree with a lot of the ways they ran the organization. I believe they tried to have too much control over the coaches and players, and I think they make many decisions that have their own interests prioritized over what is best for the team.”

Billingsley sent that message as a follow-up to a 20-minute phone interview with the Free Press, and he said “the fact that they cut me has nothin' to do with” the grainy photo he used in the video for his first single, “Battle Born.”

“I should’ve played better,” Billingsley wrote.

Quinn was in his first season as Lions GM when he signed Billingsley to a three-year free-agent deal out of Eastern Oregon in 2016.

Billingsley spent parts of the next three seasons with the Lions, bouncing between the practice squad and active roster. He appeared in two games in the 2017 season, was waived after the 2018 preseason and spent that September on the New England Patriots’ practice squad.

When the Lions reached out to try to sign Billingsley to their practice squad after his release from New England later that month, he said he already had decided to move on from football.

“My body was hurting,” Billingsley said. “I have a lot of injuries and just like waking up in the morning, having a hard time being able to walk until I got my back warmed up and stuff like that. I was only 25 and I was like, ‘Man, this is messed up.’ And then I just, honestly the whole music thing was more meaningful to me and I have a vision with it and I just want to — and it was more challenging to me. I feel like, it was just a more meaningful path for me to at least attempt.”

Battle Born video out now!

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I wanted to begin this new journey in a way that was personal to me, and in a way that I could give back to my hometown and recognize others from Winnemucca doing big things. thank you, hope you enjoy! pic.twitter.com/jYRpw17ico — Jace Billingsley (@jacegable) November 29, 2019

Billingsley, who started playing guitar as a senior in high school, said he plans to release several singles in the coming months before dropping his first album.

In his first single, a hip-hop/rock 'n' roll ballad that he called “one of my rougher” songs, he sings that he spent “a couple years chasing that crowd noise and saw I don't belong with them soft uptown boys” while a photo of Wood and Quinn appears in the video.

“I didn’t want anyone to think I was talking about like my teammates or anything like that, because that’s definitely not what I was going by, 'cause teammates were amazing and all that,” Billingsley said. “Someone else kind of came up with that idea, said they saw it done before. I was like, might as well run from it. I don’t like bashing people and I’m not necessarily trying to bash those guys, but I don’t agree with a lot of the way that they treat the players.

“I mean, I don’t want to get misquoted as saying I don’t know something, but I just think that they could have conducted their business a little better. But it is a business, and that’s part of it, so I guess maybe I’m taking more of a shot at just how the fact that football becomes a business and it’s not a sport where everyone’s playing as a team. So that was part of that reason.”

Billingsley said he “really didn’t have much interaction with” Wood during his time in Detroit and declined to share any specific incidents of how he felt mistreated by the organization.

Overall, he said he’s “very thankful for my time I had in the NFL and with the Lions,” and called playing in the NFL “a life-changing experience.” During his time in Detroit, Billingsley said he was dealing with family issues that forced him rethink his priorities.

“I’m not trying to bash these guys too bad, they just, they’re doing what they do but it just, there’s a lot of deceit in it,” he said, adding, “I think overall it’s more about just people that take business over the top and prioritize that over other things that are actually meaningful.”

Billingsley’s video also features appearances by a preteen cancer survivor he got to know through his work at the Boys & Girls Clubs in his hometown of Winnemucca, Nevada, and one of his close friends, Mitch Pollock, a saddle bronc rider from the small, tight-knit northern Nevada community.

Billingsley, who works part-time doing marketing and helping to run the club’s S.T.E.M. program, and recently started his own foundation, Up From The Muck, said he’s pursuing a career in music because “I feel like I could actually reach more people” than in football.

“It’s a vision that I see right now and something that hopefully everyone will take notice to eventually, but just want to spread a positive message and help more people out,” he said. “That’s kind of the reason why I came out with the video first, where I want to help out people from my hometown, find their passions and help them get opportunities to achieve those.”

An all-state quarterback in high school who played wide receiver and running back in college, Billingsley said he doesn’t miss football but is “very thankful for the whole experience.”

“Overall I think the whole experience has all led me to the place where I’m supposed to be at now,” he said.

Contact Dave Birkett at dbirkett@freepress.com. Follow him on Twitter @davebirkett. Read more on the Detroit Lions and sign up for our Lions newsletter.