NFLPA Award Finalists: Bills' Damar Hamlin, Patriots' Cornerback
It's the NFL Players Association's highest honor, and the New England Patriots have a representative among the five finalists.
Veteran cornerback Jonathan Jones is in the running for the NFLPA's prestigious Alan Page Community Award. The other finalists are Damar Hamlin (Buffalo Bills), Charles Leno Jr. (Washington Commanders), Darren Waller (Las Vegas Raiders) and Devin White (Tampa Bay Buccaneers).
The NFLPA Alan Page Community (APC) Award is the highest honor that the NFLPA can bestow upon a player. The award annually recognizes one player who goes above and beyond to perform community service in his team city and/or hometown.
Each finalist will receive a $10,000 donation from the NFLPA for his foundation or charity of choice. As an award for the players and by the players, the winner will be determined next week through a league-wide electronic vote by their NFL peers.
This year’s winner will be announced Feb. 8 at the NFLPA’s annual Super Bowl press conference in Arizona. The honoree will receive an additional $100,000 donation, courtesy of the NFLPA, to his foundation or charity of choice.
Jones, who played a pivotal role in New England's play-making defense this season, also had an impressive year off the field.
He earned Week 12 NFLPA Community MVP honors for creating a "Thanksgiving to Remember" for his college town of Auburn, Alabama and also Foxboro. During the Patriots' bye week in November and in partnership with Auburn Sustenance, the veteran defender held a tailgate at his alma mater that raised enough funds to feed 450 local families with meals and snacks on the days that Auburn City Schools are closed for the holidays.
The Super Bowl champion also hosted a campus visit for a group of 10 football recruits, covering travel, lodging and meals for the prospects, who came from smaller schools and heard from Jones about his own journey. He then closed out the week back in Boston, where he provided a holiday dinner for 250 kids at the Blue Hills Boys & Girls Club, distributed turkeys and frozen meals to 100 more community members and served as QB1 for the club’s Turkey Classic Flag Football Game.
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