‘Why did I go from the NFL’s best team to its worst? $90m’
Malik Jackson left the Super Bowl champions for money and has no regrets, he tells Daniel Schofield
Short of being recast as Sam Beckett in cult television series Quantum Leap there is pretty much no scenario in which Gareth Bale could go from scoring in the Champions League final for Real Madrid to signing for Hull City the following season. Yet such a parallel universe exists on the other side of the Atlantic in the strange, occasionally wonderful, world of the NFL.
Malik Jackson won the Super Bowl with the Denver Broncos in February. He is widely acknowledged as among the most destructive defensive players in American football. As a defensive end his job is to overpower the offensive linemen, commonly the size of a polar bear, to reach the quarterback or running-back. Not that he is fussy in that regard. Last season Jackson recorded five quarterback sacks and 34 tackles.
He also registered his first and only touchdown of his NFL and college career in Super Bowl 50 when Cam Newton, the Carolina Panthers quarterback, was strip-sacked by Von Miller, the Broncos linebacker. “Everything stops for a moment,” Jackson told The Sunday Telegraph. “Then you are like, ‘Oh wow, ball’s out’ and I did my fastest to get to there. I didn’t know how to act after I scored. I just threw the ball in the stands. If I had a second chance, I would have probably done a little dance to spice things up. Maybe a bit of cha-cha. Try to get on Dancing with the Stars.”
And yet 31 days after winning his first Super Bowl ring, Jackson signed for the Jacksonville Jaguars, who face the Indianapolis Colts at Wembley this afternoon. The Jaguars have not reached the play-offs since 2007, which was also the last time they recorded a winning season, and have never won their AFC South Division. There will be no second ring appearing on Jackson’s hand, at least for this season.
Among the NFL’s rules is that the worst teams get the first choice in the draft of college players and also tend to have more money available within their salary cap to lure away other teams’ stars, such as Jackson. “When I got to free agency after the Super Bowl my agent was talking about Jacksonville and eventually they offered six years on a lot of money,” Jackson said. “We thought about it for a night and then thought, ‘You know what, I want to go to this team, turn them around and become winners’. I wanted to see if I can be a great player and not just a role player like I was in Denver. I wanted to take a new challenge on and see what I can do to turn this team around.”
“A lot of money” in his case means a deal worth up to $90 million (£69 million) and Jackson makes no apology for extracting each and every cent from a contract in which half of that money is guaranteed. “It is a cut-throat business and we have to be cut-throat, too,” he said.
It was noticeable that while some Broncos fans reacted to Jackson’s departure with accusations of greed and betrayal, his former team-mates unanimously tweeted their congratulations and approval.
Loyalty, as Jackson points out, is a two-way street. During the first four years of his rookie contract that college players are automatically granted, Jackson earned $2.1 million (£1.6 million) pre-tax. Hardly insignificant but, at the same time, a drop in the ocean to the estimated $13.3 billion revenue that the NFL generated in 2015 (around double that of the Premier League).
Furthermore, at any point during that four-year contract, Jackson could have been injured and cut from his contract without so much as a handshake goodbye. Hence Jackson has no reason to feel guilty about leaving the Super Bowl champions behind.
“Denver didn’t want to pay me,” Jackson said. “It was one of those things, I respect the business but I have to feed my family too. I knew my worth and I wasn’t about to be short-changed because an organisation was my home for four years. That didn’t matter to me. If they had offered me $90 million I would have probably stayed. But they didn’t so I am here.
“People in this business, the front office, they don’t care about us. We are expendable. We are people who can be replaced. Guys get cut every day. Guys get injured and never receive another dollar. I said that won’t be me. I wanted to put myself in the right position to be able to obtain the right level of money to be able to take care of my family. I want to make sure that my daughter can have a future where she can do whatever she wants to and has a nice lifestyle.”
Where money and politics are generally taboo interview subjects for British athletes, Jackson is happy to discuss both in detail. Since San Francisco 49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick chose to remain seated during the national anthem in a pre-season game, an individual protest at racial injustice has gathered momentum with several black players choosing to kneel during the Star Spangled Spanner in solidarity with issues linked to the Black Lives Matter movement.
Jackson has not chosen to participate, even though he sympathises with the cause. He also points out the absurdity of the rage generated by an individual’s posture during the national anthem versus the widespread indifference in white America to innocent black men being killed by police on a regular basis.
“It is amazing what people care about,” Jackson said. “It is a-backwards on some things. That’s America for you. It is tough. People say that military give you your freedoms but then when you use one of your freedoms it is like, ‘Oh no you are using it the wrong way’. If you can’t see there’s social injustice in this country and black people are being shot by cops every day then you need to take off your blinkers.”
‘It is a cut-throat business and we have to be cut-throat, too. I wasn’t going to be short-changed’