Aaron Hernandez’s brother can start putting life back together
The Hernandez brothers were each on the fast track to football success in 2013 when the news of NFL star Aaron’s involvement in the murder of Odin Lloyd suddenly sent their careers and lives spiraling.
Aaron’s older brother, Jonathan, or “D.J.,” inevitably was caught up in the collateral damage of the crime. Now he finally is ready to resume his coaching dream more than two years after he gave up his post at a big-time Division I program and ran for cover.
The former University of Connecticut quarterback has been named the head football coach at Ledyard High School in Connecticut, according to high school sports website The Day. Athletic director Jim Buonocore, who coached Hernandez in 2004 during the state’s high school all-star game, raved about the former standout player turned coach.
“Jonathan is an extremely intelligent individual who has proven time and again that he is willing to work hard with young people to help them achieve success,” Buonocore said Friday. “He has a clear understanding of our expectations in Ledyard, and I am confident he can exceed those expectations in meeting the academic, social, emotional and athletic needs of our students.”
After earning Gatorade High School Player of the Year honors in 2004 and graduating from UConn four years later, Hernandez started making a name for himself in the college football coaching ranks, securing jobs at Brown University as a quarterbacks coach, the University of Miami as a graduate assistant and Iowa University as a tight ends coach.
It was during his time at Iowa that Hernandez learned of the murder charges against his brother and quickly tried to distance himself from the family name. As he told Sports Illustrated in a July feature, the 30-year-old moved to Texas with his wife, abandoned his coaching career to work as a roofer and started going by Jonathan over his childhood nickname “D.J.”
After years of being denied coaching jobs because of his relationship with Aaron, Hernandez has been given a second chance — and in his home state, where people surely will remember his past, the good and the bad.
Jonathan said he still visits Aaron often in jail, but he never has asked him what happened that June night in 2013.
“Whether Aaron did or did not do it, I don’t know,” Jonathan told Sports Illustrated. “And honestly, it’s irrelevant. It really is. He’s in a situation because he decided to be in the wrong place at the wrong time with the wrong people.”
Aaron, the former Patriots tight end, is serving a life sentence for Lloyd’s murder. He also has been charged in a separate case with the killing of two men in 2012. He has pleaded not guilty. The trial is scheduled to begin next month.