Kean U. nose tackle Darryl Jackson working to achieve NFL dream
By Jenny Vrentas/The Star-Ledger
March 09, 2010, 7:00AM
Kean nose tackle Darryl Jackson hopes to make the jump from Division 3 to the NFL. Jackson has a Pro Day Tuesday at TEST Sports Club in Martinsville.Last August, after a late-night practice during training camp, the Kean University football coaches were holed up in the basement of Harwood Arena until the early morning hours. Close to 1:30 a.m., while they were going over scripts for the next day’s practice, they heard a rumbling outside their meeting room.
They peered into the hallway and discovered Darryl Jackson — their star senior nose tackle — pushing carts of dirty jerseys down the hall.
“What the heck are you doing?” head coach Dan Garrett asked.
“Laundry,” Jackson said with a shrug.
This was the guy who plugged up the middle of the Kean defense. The guy who swallowed up blockers sometimes three at a time. He was the talent who drew dozens of scouts to Union last year, from all but three or four NFL teams. But in Division 3, that job doesn’t come with a scholarship.
So Jackson did laundry for the equipment manager, stealing time at night between summer two-a-days. He collected tickets at soccer and basketball games. He bounced at a nightclub on weekends, and delivered beer in the summers. Seeing scouts reminded him there may be a future at the next level, but he stayed locked in on the present.
“I don’t want to jinx myself, you know what I mean?” said Jackson, who will work out Tuesday at his Pro Day at Total Energy Systems Training Sports Club in Martinsville. “I’m kind of superstitious. I’m not there yet.”
Perhaps that’s because the 22-year-old has learned little in life comes with a guarantee. As a senior at Red Bank High, interest from schools like Rutgers and UConn dissolved when he didn’t qualify academically for Division 1. Four years later — with his resolve deepened after the death of a close friend last fall — now is the time for Jackson to achieve his pro ambitions.
The leap from Division 3 to the NFL is no doubt a quantum one, and since 1996, just 10 players from that level have been drafted into the league. But Jackson’s agent, Darin Morgan — who also represents Texans defensive tackle Amobi Okoye, a former top-10 pick — believes Jackson could sneak into the later rounds of next month’s draft. At worst, he expects Jackson to get his shot as an undrafted free agent.
“I really, truly hope it works for this kid, because not only does he warrant a look, he deserves it,” Garrett said. “What would it mean to us? It’s probably something similar, on a scaled-down version, to what (Colts receiver) Pierre Garçon means to Mount Union.”
• • •
Garrett first met Jackson in an old physical education office at Red Bank, sporting a Fu Manchu mustache and an up-front approach: “I know you have bigger things on the table,” Garrett said, “but if those bigger things don’t work out, we’d love to have you.”
Those bigger things hit the speed bump of the NCAA Clearinghouse, which required a combination of grades and SAT scores that Jackson did not meet. He didn’t consider junior college. He considered Kean.
Jackson had lost out on a Division 1 scholarship, but Garrett had gained his cornerstone. The defensive-minded coach implemented a 3-4 scheme, with Jackson as the nucleus. His class had unprecedented success at Kean, earning as many wins in four years (28) as the program had over the prior 12, and playing in more postseason games (3) than in the previous three-and-a-half decades.
No one delighted in Jackson’s success more than his grandmother, Ella Mae Frink, who caravanned up the Parkway for every home game with her twin sister, her niece and Jackson’s baby nephew.
“We don’t have much money, and I felt so bad I didn’t,” said Frink, who worked for two decades as the custodial staff supervisor of the Tinton Falls School District. “But he worked his way through the whole four years and still accomplished it all. That’s one reason I say, there’s no more like him.”
Frink has been the constant presence in Jackson’s life, helping his mother raise him when he was a kid too big to play Pop Warner, and caring for him while he finished at Red Bank after his mom had moved to North Carolina. His parents split up before he was born, and his father, Darryl Jackson, Sr., entered his life again late in high school.
Jackson’s senior season at Kean was his best and, midway through last fall, Garrett said Jackson found the groove of “a man possessed” as the Cougars won eight straight games. But Jackson’s purpose on the football field took on a different dimension in early November, one for which he wasn’t prepared.
Days before Kean’s last regular-season game against rival Montclair State, Jackson and his close circle from Red Bank received a message on Facebook. It was from Sean Hocutt, one of their best friends, who was in the Navy and living in San Diego.
“I know I haven’t been in touch,” he wrote, “but I just want to say, ‘I love you.’”
Jackson soon learned Hocutt had taken his life.
Jackson retreated to Garrett’s tiny, 8-foot-by-8-foot office the next morning. He stayed there for hours, talking a little and crying more. He shut down for those few days, and thought how he could honor his friend by living out those hopes they had once shared on the practice field at Red Bank.
He took the field that Saturday and played one of his best games all season, even though Kean lost, which still makes him both sad and sick.
“It motivates me a lot, that’s why I think it was so tough to lose that last game,” Jackson said. “It’s motivation to make me accomplish more; to get to the NFL. I want to do it.”
• • •
Jackson’s determination has been clear this winter, as he’s shuttled between Kean, where he is taking five classes toward his degree in community recreation, and Martinsville, where he is training six days a week.
The Eagles and Giants were the first teams to send scouts to Kean last spring, when Jackson weighed-in at 349 pounds and clocked 5.65 seconds in the 40-yard dash. But since then, he has morphed.
He is now a lean 310 pounds. He has been timed as low as 5.18 in the 40. He has tripled his reps on the 225-pound bench press. The Division 1 perks he missed out on — regimented nutrition and supervised lifts — he’s taken advantage of this winter.
“He was very blessed, but very raw,” TEST founder Brian Martin said. “It was a project that was worth it.”
Indeed, perhaps because of his endearing humility and easy smile, Jackson has a wide web of support.
Former West Virginia defensive tackle Skip Fuller, part of the TEST staff, volunteered for extra one-on-one sessions with Jackson every Saturday. Curtis McGriff, the former Giants defensive tackle, works with him once a week on technique — and raves about his quick first step and hand moves.
Morgan took a chance on Jackson because he thought he had “the total package of talent and character.” And Steve Colson, a philanthropist from Warren and TEST member, was impressed enough after a brief meeting with Jackson that he asked to be a sponsor for him.
Jackson has felt like a top prospect these past few months, and his confidence has grown after discovering he can keep up with the players from programs like Penn State and Stanford he has been training alongside.
It just takes one NFL team to agree — and the Jets, Eagles, Packers and Vikings have taken particular interest in Jackson. Morgan declined to speak to feedback from individual teams, but did estimate Jackson is on the radar of at least half the teams in the NFL, for both 4-3 and 3-4 schemes, and multiple teams have taken numerous visits to see him.
Along with his Division 3 roots, Jackson’s height — he is only 6-1 — is a potential knock against him. But he has been inspired by another undersized tackle: Rutgers’ Eric Foster, who also trained at TEST. During the Super Bowl, when Foster was in on a goal-line stop for the Colts, Jackson promptly texted Martin.
“E Foster!” he wrote.
“You’re next,” Martin sent back.
At the thought, Jackson’s easy grin becomes even easier. With every load of laundry he tossed into the machine, this is the dream he hoped would come out in the wash.
