Eddie Jackson will rise under Chicago Bears defensive coordinator Sean Desai
A common question over the past year has been: what happened to Eddie Jackson? While it’s a fair question, it’s also pretty simple to answer.
First and foremost, Jackson has not been allowed to completely roam free as he was in 2017 and 2018. He’s at his best when he can feel out opposing quarterbacks and make a play on the ball.
Now, we did see a lot of poor tackling out of Jackson (and much of the defense, quite frankly) in 2020. That’s going to be a point of emphasis, no doubt. Shore up the tackling, first. Take care of those fundamentals. But, beyond that, it’s all about putting Jackson in a position to do what he does best.
Eddie Jackson's 2018 regular season goes down in the PFF history books tied as the highest-graded regular season from a safety since 2006. pic.twitter.com/PfXSKDxGX3
— PFF (@PFF) January 11, 2019
An intriguing piece of information for those trying to figure out what happened to Jackson under Pagano: he had five tackles for loss in 2019, and that’s a bad thing.
What? A bad thing?
Absolutely, Jackson has no business playing up towards the line of scrimmage. Sure, that was two seasons ago, but it goes to show how wrong Pagano was in his usage of Jackson.
If Desai gets the pass rush going once more, allowing Jackson to play his style of football is going to prove to be a huge difference-maker for this unit as a whole.