There’s a saying that football players have to have short-term memory – meaning they have to get over a bad play quickly and move on to the next. Well, on Sunday, Carolina Panthers cornerback Mike Jackson’s memory served him well as Carolina defeated the Arizona Cardinals in overtime in the last home game of the season. When the fourth-year defensive back out of the University of Miami came up with two big stops against Marvin Harrison Jr, it was the familiarity that helped him make the plays.
“The comeback, or the curl or whatever you wanna call it, that was the first catch I gave up early in the game so I knew they were coming back to it. I just had to be patient. Then, the out, they had just hit me with it in the red zone; I think the drive before so I kinda felt like it was coming. I should have picked it.” Jackson was tasked with keeping Harrison in check for most of the game and he finished with four catches for 39 yards on 12 targets. Only one of those catches, for 9 yards, came in the second half. His longest reception was for 12 yards. Early on, it looked like Kyler Murray was targeting Jackson’s side of the field most often.
“Early in the game, I was guarding #18 a lot. I think in like three plays, I got comeback, a shake route, and something else, so I kinda like figured it out. They came at me, then for like three quarters, they went away and got into the actual offense. Overtime, they came back.”
There’s a lot of trash talk that goes on inside the hash marks, but it spilled over to the sideline and the Cardinals’ coaches as well. Jackson tells us, “I don’t know what coach it was on their sideline but when he caught the curl, I was like, ‘Bruh, you’re not gonna catch another ball.’ Then he was like, ‘We gonna see.’ He was talking trash.” He adds, “After the game, I went to him and was like ‘I told you, you see now.'” The Cardinals were chatty all game and were eliminated from playoff contention with Sunday’s loss. “That’s fine, they can call us trash but we beat ’em. If we trash, what that mean?” Asked if he knew that the Panthers had played spoiler, Jackson responded. “Oh yeah, I know that. My homeboy, Starling (Thomas V), early vacation my dawg! So, you’re welcome!”
Jackson had six tackles to go along with the two passes he broke up in overtime. He and the rest of the Panthers secondary will have their work cut out for them as Carolina travels to Tampa Bay for a divisional game where they’ll face Baker Mayfield and Mike Evans. The Panthers lost in overtime to the Buccaneers in Week 13 and hope to split for the season.
