It didn’t take long for Vic Fangio to realize that Eddie Jackson was a special talent.
Many NFL teams might’ve overlooked the All-Pro safety when he dropped to the fourth round in the 2017 draft. But former Bears defense coordinator Fangio saw something special from the beginning.
Quite early, actually.
“It wasn’t but two or three days into camp when I said to Ed Donatell, our secondary coach, that this guy is going to be really good,” Fangio said, via NFL.com. “He asked how I could know that after only two or three days. You could just tell. When you have an instinctive player, a smart player who has a nose for the ball and understands football, you know he’s going to be a great player.”
Fangio knew almost immediately that Bears GM Ryan Pace had gotten a steal, and given what Jackson’s already accomplished in his first two seasons, that much is obvious.
In two seasons, Jackson has become one of the premier safeties in the league. He’s garnered eight interceptions, including six last season, as well as five defensive touchdowns en route to his first All-Pro nod in 2018.
But perhaps the scariest things — for opposing offenses around the league — is that Jackson doesn’t believe he’s peaked yet.
“Right now I know that I’m not even close to reaching my peak as a player,” Jackson told me last month. “But with the kind of teammates I have, the type of coaches I have, it’s also just going to be – not to sound selfish – for me to do better and make better plays and do bigger things.”
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