Veteran safety Kareem Jackson of the Denver Broncos has completed his four-game suspension and may rejoin the team this week for their game against the New England Patriots on Christmas Eve. Still, Jackson hasn’t been added back to the roster as of Friday.
“We have until Monday with his roster exemption,” head coach Sean Payton said on Thursday. “Officially by Monday, if he comes up, someone else has to come down. We’re at 53 plus him, and then we’ll figure out how we’ll handle it relative to this week and going forward.”
There could be a few reasons why the Broncos are taking their time to get Jackson back. One of them is the roster-math choice to cut a player to create space on the 53, as Payton hinted earlier.
Although it’s not an easy thing for a club to do this late in the season, NFL teams usually make the move quickly if it means getting a valuable veteran back on the field, whether it’s from injured reserve or—in Jackson’s case—a suspension.
Given that Belichick and Payton are similar in nature to Bill Parcells, the revered head coach of New England will probably assume that Jackson’s roster standing will be utilized, as it were, in Denver’s poker hand. However, even if Jackson has excelled during his career, this isn’t some perpetual All-Pro.
Jackson is 35 years old and has slowed down precipitously over the past two seasons. He isn’t the same difference-maker he was when the Broncos initially signed him back in 2019.
We can argue about Jackson being unfairly persecuted by the NFL, and trust me, there’s plenty of water under that bridge, but his lack of poise as a hitter has cost the Broncos severely at times this season. It definitely helped contribute mightily to Denver’s opening-season loss to the Las Vegas Raiders, and it can be argued that Jackson’s recklessness has contributed to more than one loss.
But at the end of the day, Jackson has forgotten more about football than most of us will ever know. He’s a leader in the Broncos’ locker room that players look to, he’s a tone-setter, and he’s still very physical and experienced. There’s a reason he was named a team captain to open the 2023 season, even though he was re-signed as almost an afterthought post-draft.
