Latest News

She had slept little. Phone messages piled up. It would hardly be a normal morning in the student financial aid office, where London-Jones is the director. Then again, it is not every day that your son scores two touchdowns in the Super Bowl in a celebrative return to his hometown.

Almost everyone in the office wore a purple Baltimore Ravens T-shirt. A sign on a conference room door said "Super Bowl Champion Mom." London-Jones wore a pair of hand-painted sneakers bearing a likeness of her son and his mantra, "Catch me if you can."

The 49ers could not. Not often enough. In Baltimore's stirring 34-31 victory, Jacoby Jones finished off a 56-yard touchdown pass with great alertness, getting to his feet after not being touched by a defender. Then with a long, angular sprinter's stride, he returned a kickoff 108 yards for a touchdown, the longest ever in an National Football League. postseason game.

"I've been an underdog all my life," Jones, 28, said. "When I got home, I was determined."

Baltimore quarterback Joe Flacco was named the game's most valuable player, but Xavier's student aid office gave the award to Jones. Many of the cheering counselors had known him since he was a skinny, pigeon-toed boy who had great speed but, many football experts thought, not enough size to make it to the N.F.L.

"We share in that joy like he's ours," said Selena Vance, the senior counselor who is known as "Sis" to Jones. She watched Sunday's game with her sons in Baton Rouge, La., and found herself running alongside the Ravens' star during his kickoff return. "I jumped off the couch and scared the dog," she said.

It was a crowning evening for a mother and her only child, who used to attend church as a toddler in New Orleans wearing an Archie Manning jersey and a miniature Saints uniform. "He'd say, 'Football, Mommy, football,' " London-Jones, 56, said with a laugh. "He'd be in the stroller with a bottle and the helmet would spin around his head."

At Abramson High School in New Orleans, Jones was an all-around athlete. But, by his own description, he stood but 5 feet 7 inches and weighed 160 pounds "soaking wet with bricks in my pockets." He attended Southeastern Louisiana to run track but struggled. His mother said she gave him an ultimatum: "Either find a school that fits you or flip burgers."

Jones next tried out for the football team at Lane College, a historically black Division II school in Jackson, Tenn. On Aug. 26, 2005, his mother left New Orleans to see him play, taking only one extra set of clothes, believing along with many others that Hurricane Katrina would be a minor disruption. Instead, her home along the shore of Lake Pontchartrain took on four feet of water. It was a month and a half before she saw the house again, a year before she returned to live.

Meanwhile, at Lane College, Jones began to develop the resourcefulness of a receiver and a kick returner and a wiry muscularity on a frame that has filled out to 6-3 and 220 pounds. The Houston Texans selected him in the third round of the 2007 N.F.L. draft. An arrest on a charge of driving under the influence in 2008 brought public embarrassment and a private realization about professional responsibility.

"That was when the light went off in my head," Jones, who entered a diversionary program for first-time offenders, told The Baltimore Sun last summer. "It's not college anymore. I had to learn from my mistakes. I straightened my act out."

Still, Jones could not match his toughness and explosive speed with consistently secure hands. Last May, the Texans released him. He signed with the Ravens and a metamorphosis began. Jones has become known as both selfless and dependable, lacerating on kick returns. Linebacker Ray Lewis referred to him by the nickname Clutch on Sunday. During the regular season, Jones returned a kickoff 108 yards for a touchdown against Dallas and 105 yards for a score against Oakland. He also took a punt 63 yards to the end zone against Pittsburgh. After six N.F.L. seasons, Jones made the Pro Bowl.

Then, in the divisional round of the playoffs, he scored an improbable touchdown with 31 seconds left in the game. On a frigid day in Denver, Jones made a 70-yard reception that sent the game against the Broncos into overtime, stunning local fans into silence and providing the lifeline for an eventual Baltimore victory in a second overtime.

His Super Bowl touchdowns were not viewed as redemption or bitter payback against Houston, Jones said. Instead, he spoke graciously of the Texans, saying: "I thank them. They gave me an opportunity to play football, coming from Lane College, in the N.F.L."