2 Nashville natives earn roster spots
No, Matthew Jackson is not from Tampa.
Tennessee Titans general manager Ran Carthon is a Florida boy. So when he hears coach Mike Vrabel and Jackson — the undrafted rookie the Titans kept on their 53-man roster — talking about Hillsboro High, he assumes they mean Hillsborough High, the long-standing Tampa institution best known for producing baseball legends Gary Sheffield and Dwight Gooden.
It hadn’t crossed Carthon’s mind that Jackson might be from right here in Nashville.
“You know what’s funny?” Carthon said. “Obviously knowing (rookie receiver Colton Dowell) is from here, I’ll be perfectly honest with you: I had no clue that Matt Jackson was.”
When the Titans trimmed their roster Tuesday, two rookies who grew up in the Nashville area survived the cut. Dowell, the seventh-round pick out of UT Martin, grew up in Lebanon and went to Wilson Central High School. Jackson, a safety from Eastern Kentucky, went to Hillsboro. The one in Green Hills, not Florida.
Neither Jackson nor Dowell were predestined to land on NFL rosters. In 2017, when the two were seniors in high school, 247Sports rated Dowell a twostar recruit and the 74th-best high school football player in Tennessee. Jackson wasn’t even one of the 122 Tennessee recruits the service bothered to give a star rating to.
Both players took the small college route. More impressively, both spent six years honing their craft at one school in the transfer portal era. Dowell started four seasons with the Skyhawks and Jackson started three seasons for the Colonels. They, along with a gaggle of other Nashville natives, trained together before the 2023 NFL draft. They both attended the Titans’ local pro day, a showcase opportunity for prospects from the area to work out at the facility. Things worked out. “Coming from a small school, each opportunity you have to put yourself in front of those scouts is paramount to your success in this league,” Dowell said. “They don’t send a lot of scouts to UT Martin. They don’t do that. It’s just what it is. So it was paramount.”
How they made it
Dowell struggled at times in minicamp and training camp but ended up sticking with the team after a big performance against the New England Patriots in the final preseason game, and thanks at least in part to injuries to fellow receivers Treylon Burks and Kyle Philips. Jackson had to battle five other undrafted rookies in the secondary for a roster spot, not to mention the team’s veterans, but was able to stand out because of his knack for making plays on special teams, the area where he says he “built his career” at Eastern Kentucky.
Still, neither felt particularly assured that he was safe on cut-down day. Dowell says he spent the entire day hoping not to get a call from Vrabel or Carthon. He eventually found out he made the roster when he saw a post on X, previously known as Twitter.
Jackson found out a little sooner. Carthon and Vrabel called in Jackson and the other four undrafted rookies the Titans retained for a meeting earlier in the afternoon to let them know the good news. The two congratulated the rookies for getting as far as they have, but challenged them not to think of that moment as an ending, but to keep working as hard as they need to to stay on the roster.
After hearing the news, Jackson called his parents. Then he called his biggest fan, his 2-year-old daughter, Summer. (His 5-month-old daughter, Winter, isn’t old enough yet to be his second-biggest fan.) He says being from Nashville means he has a lot of peers and a lot of fans around town who are happy to celebrate his success. Success that has caught even him by surprise.
“I couldn’t imagine but, hey, just I took it one day at a time and look where we are,” Jackson said.
Nick Suss is the Titans beat writer for The Tennessean. Contact Nick at nsuss@gannett.com. Follow Nick on X, the platform previously known as Twitter, @nicksuss.