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TERRE HAUTE – Poor Mister TV Guy. Imagine, going to Marlin Jackson for answers about Marlin Jackson.
“So, are you just a cornerback now?” he asks Jackson, everyone melting in the late-morning sun outside the Indianapolis Colts’ summer dressing rooms at Rose-Hulman.
Jackson hardly even pauses, as is his habit.
“Yeah,” he replies. “I mean, I’m cornerback in the nickel now. Unless they need me to go in there, that’s the only time I’m going in there. But for now, I’m starting at right corner, and I’m going inside to play the nickel.”
All together now: Huh?
In one breath he says he’s the cornerback in the nickel. In the next he says he’s going inside (which means safety, right?) in the nickel. In yet another breath he says he’s starting at right corner, period.
A pause here for yet one more breath, because heaven knows we all need it by now. Even Marlin needs it.
He’s a corner. He’s not a corner. He’s a corner except in the nickel. He’s onlya corner in the nickel.
Oh, the curse of being versatile. An identity crisis is sure to follow.
For the record, the Colts say Jackson is moving to right corner, just as Kelvin Hayden is moving to the other corner, both of them taking the place of two other corners, Jason David and Nick Harper. Both have moved on, just as other corners have moved on. No one seems terribly concerned by this, perhaps because it’s become just one of this franchise’s little quirks.
“(Kelvin) and Marlin made some big plays for us in the playoffs and now we are going to count on them a little bit more, but it’s the natural progression, and we think they are going to do fine,” is how Colts coach Tony Dungy puts it.
And, yeah, OK, he’s probably right, because this isthe natural progression, and the Colts’ uncanny ability to plug new talent into old positions just as it ripens is another one of their quirks. And so David and Harper go, Hayden and Jackson slide in, the status remains quo. And as for Jackson’s confusion, or at least seeming confusion …
Well, you’d be confused, too, if you had his résumé. The book on him, and it goes way back, is that he’s an exceptional athlete who can help you in any number of positions. And so, of course, he has.
In college at Michigan, Jackson started out at cornerback, went to safety his junior year, then went back to corner his senior year. As a rookie with the Colts, he started one game – at leftcorner. Last year, he started six games at free safety, two games at strong safety, filled in at corner when injuries dictated and ended the year with 76 tackles, 49 solos and one interception.
He was playing corner in the nickel the night he made the biggest play of his pro career, the interception of Tom Brady with 24 seconds left that sealed the Colts’ 38-34 victory in the AFC Championship game in January at the RCA Dome.
Now he’s a corner for good, nickel or otherwise. And you can bring it right on.
“You just have to go in and fill a role,” Jackson says. “Everybody knows guys get developed great here, and when they step in, they’re ready to play.
“We have a great veteran leadership; they show us the way and we fall in behind them. But I’m going into my third year, you know, playing a lot of football here, got to the Super Bowl, got to play in the playoffs. So I definitely feel we can step up as leaders as well.”
And the whole corner-safety-corner thing?
“I look at myself as a football player first,” Jackson says. “I feel I am a corner that can play safety. I feel like I can play both at will.”
And if you want to think he’d like to be one over the other … be his guest. Safety’s nice – might even be preferable, just for the job security – but he’s a corner now. He thinks. Mostly.
What was the question again?
“Look, I feel I have great attributes at both positions,” he says, trying one more time to clear all this up. “But I worked hard all summer getting ready to go back to corner and spent more time there. And it’s worked real well.
“I think everything’s going just the way it’s supposed to go.”
Whichever way that might be.
