Here's the whole thing. It makes me feel bad to read what Dex & the Bengals think. Crap!! We are becoming the Rodney Dangerfield of the NFL. [banghead]
Former Buc stops here
By GEOFF HOBSON
October 11, 2006
Posted: 10 p.m.
Jackson hopes he'll be able to face his former mates this Sunday. (Bengals photo)
Dexter Jackson still has the Warren Sapp quote somewhere from that Super Bowl season with Tampa Bay. He’s just sorry head coach Jon Gruden and the rest of the Buccaneers braintrust misplaced it and filed it under ‘salary cap.'
“We finally found a safety and that’s why we’re playing well,” Jackson quoted Sapp on Wednesday before the Bengals practiced in preparation for those Bucs.
Jackson is still hurt and says it’s a close call if he’ll play Sunday in the stadium he helped make the home of a champion. But he no longer hurts from his second rejection by the Bucs. Partly because their defense looks to be hurting more without him.
“You can only hide the truth so long,” Jackson said. “It comes to light. ...It looks like it’s backfiring.”
If you think the Bengals have been struggling against the run since Jackson left the second game with a severely rolled ankle by allowing 406 yards on the ground in the next two games, check out what the Bucs’ defending NFL No. 1 defense has done since it decided Will Allen and Jermaine Phillips were better answers at safety than Jackson.
He's the only starter who doesn't return to a Tampa defense ranked 30th against the run, giving up 163 yards per game, 50 more than a Bengals unit ranked 27th. A major reason the Bengals sought Jackson in free agency is because his sure tackling helped the Bucs lead the NFL last season in allowing just three runs of at least 20 yards.
This season the Bucs have already allowed six and last week Saints running back Deuce McAllister had two alone of 57 and 24 with the help of a combined seven missed tackles.
“When you watch film, there’s a lot of long runs,” Jackson said. “There were some long runs (last year), but not 60-yard touchdowns. Who is back deep? It’s like a spade is a spade. You can only hide the truth so long. It comes to light.”
The truth certainly didn’t waste any time shining through in Cincinnati. After holding competent running teams Kansas City and Cleveland to 190 yards rushing combined in the first two games, the Bengals gave up 170 and 236, respectively, to Pittsburgh and New England with Jackson on the sidelines.
Injuries to strong-side linebackers David Pollack and Rashad Jeanty have hurt the cause, but the stunning lack of tackling that defensive coordinator Chuck Bresnahan attributes to the Patriots debacle has him turning to Jackson.
Besides missing his leadership, Bresnahan says the defense needs his tackling.
“He sets the whole attitude. It’s like when Bill Romanowski came to us in Oakland, he brought a different level of physical play,” Bresnahan said. “This guy does the same thing. You have a sense of calmness. Not that these other guys can’t tackle. It’s just a different attitude when this guy is on the field. He plays fast. He plays at a high level.”
But Jackson believes that attitude and tackling aren’t as valued as much in Tampa Bay as big names and offense. While guys like Sapp, and John Lynch and Derrick Brooks and Ronde Barber were going to Pro Bowls, Jackson won the MVP of the Super Bowl for the 2002 season.
And when it was Jackson that was exiled to Arizona for a one-year sentence in free agency the next year, the Bucs defense fell from No. 1 to No. 5 as Gruden and defensive coordinator Monte Kiffin hunted for the right mix of offense and defense to keep the team together.
He has been saying all bye week it was just another game, but his intensity couldn’t help but smolder through eventually.
“Look at them now,” Jackson said. “The puzzle that was the main piece of the jigsaw puzzle, it wasn’t really that part. It was other pieces that are missing and now they see that.”
He said he’s had phone calls from those observing the ’06 edition of the Bucs in Tampa Bay.
“They talk about it. (They say) ‘They miss your leadership.’ Taking nothing away from (Derrick) Brooks and Ronde (Barber). They’re leaders, but to a certain extent,” Jackson said. “You can’t be a leader when you’re just playing good. You have to be a leader when you’re playing bad also. I was the person if you weren’t playing good to say, ‘OK guys. Let’s pick it up.’ ”
It was Gruden who decided not to pick up Jackson one more time.
“Dexter’s a great player; we hated to lose him,” Gruden told Wednesday’s conference call of Cincinnati reporters. “I don’t want to make salary cap excuses, but at the time of a lot of the departures we’ve been strapped pretty good here against the cap and for that reason we haven’t been able to keep some key members of our team. I hate seeing them on other teams playing well.”
He won’t get any sympathy from Jackson.
“From my perspective watching it, it looks like it’s backfiring,” he said. “It’s just different coaches. First it was a defensive coach (Tony Dungy) now it’s an offensive-minded coach. That’s why the differences are happening. You have Gruden who loves offense and you have Kiffin who loves defense and they have to meet somewhere and I guess they’re not meeting correctly.
“Young guys are coming in because older guys are gone. I helped the younger guys and that’s why I think it backfired."
Jackson has kept on the kids in Cincinnati, mainly by example. Early on they asked him why he always went so hard in practice, and he told them it is simply out of habit.
“I don’t think about it,” he said. “You just go, go, go.”
Head coach Marvin Lewis and his staff felt that made him the perfect fit after he visited in the first week of free agency back in March. Lewis liked Jackson when he was coming out of Florida State in 1999, liked his most recent tackling vintage on tape, and was quite impressed with his football intelligence once they met.
The Bengals negotiators found that they could get a deal with Jackson or Lawyer Milloy and when the coaches emerged with their decision they sided with Jackson’s youth and Super Bowl pedigree for four years at a reported $7.6 million.
“With the Bucs he was a fine tackler who made plays on the football. So he did things that you want to see a safety do,” Lewis said. “He obviously made big plays in big games, and was somewhat of a stabilizing force. But he still brings that fire and the aggressiveness that you want to have.”
Jackson had a big supporter in Kiffin, the man he says taught him about offenses and down-and-distance and the man who called him every day and told him he wanted him back before Jackson told agent Peter Schaffer to get a deal with Cincinnati.
“But the other side wanted to go in a different direction,” said Jackson, who doesn’t really need that MVP trophy to remind how much he meant to the Bucs.
He’s got something just as good.
The Sapp quote in his clip file.
“The people who watch football, understand football,” Jackson said. “They know how big of a part of that defense I was.”
It would be strange if both puzzles are missing him Sunday because of a body part.
“It will be close,” Jackson said
