Giants 2024 UFA Primer: CB Adoree Jackson

Is it time for the Giants to move on from veteran cornerback Adoree' Jackson?

Adoree' Jackson, Cornerback

Height: 5-foot-11
Weight: 185 lbs.
Age: 28
NFL Exp.: 7 Years
College: USC

The New York Giants opened their 2023 season with enthusiasm to be partnering cornerback Adoree' Jackson with two novice ballhawks in Deonte Banks and Tre Hawkins III, who would benefit from the tutelage of their veteran teammate and take over the outside corner spots for him to move into the slot role.

The mentorship aspect might have succeeded in the early development of at least one of those guys, but when it came to Jackson’s play, there was much left to be desired as his contract reached its end.

A seven-year veteran out of USC, Jackson stepped onto the East Rutherford scene on March 23rd, 2021, when he signed a three-year, $39 million contract with the Giants in free agency. Before that, he spent four seasons with the Tennessee Titans, who drafted him 18th overall in 2017 to fill their outside corner void for what ended up being 46 games.

On the collegiate level, Jackson was a multi-talented athlete who played in three positions on the gridiron–cornerback, wide receiver, and return specialist–and added track and field into his resume during his sophomore year. As a true freshman in 2014, he earned a Pac-12 Freshman of the Year nod after making 50 tackles, returning a kickoff 98 yards for a touchdown, and posting 138 receiving yards with five combined scores for a primarily defensive player.

The rest of Jackson’s collegiate tenure with the Trojans saw him rack up 140 total tackles, six interceptions, two forced fumbles, 11 pass deflections on the defensive end, and 39 total receptions for 628 yards (16.1 average) and six touchdowns as a pass catcher. Those feats earned him the Jim Thorpe Award for the nation’s top defensive back in 2016 and convinced him to forgo his senior year and take his talents to the professional level.

Jackson went into the 2017 NFL Combine ranked as one of the top 10 cornerbacks by several outlets and media analysts, which helped his case to be selected in the top half of the first round by Tennessee. As a 23-year-old, he signed a four-year rookie deal with the Titans and competed in training camp to ultimately earn the starting cornerback role and punt returner spot.

In his rookie debut, Jackson helped headline the Titans' defense with 70 tackles, three forced fumbles, and 17 pass deflections to go along with nearly 900 return yards. His efforts helped the Titans finish 9-7 for the second consecutive season, notch their second-best defensive rankings in the past five seasons, and make a run to their first Divisional Round playoff appearance in nearly a decade.

The following season would see Jackson follow it up with a career-high 73 tackles, two interceptions, and ten pass deflections to lead the Titans to a third straight winning campaign, but his next two would be ravaged with foot and knee injuries that stifled his production and resulted in the Titans parting ways with him at the end of the 2020 season.

Since joining the Giants in 2021, Jackson has dealt with injury problems that have made him miss at least four games in his three stints with New York. However, the 28-year-old has been a staple to the team’s defensive secondary, posting at least 51 tackles per season and nine total turnovers as one of the Giants’ main outside corners.

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2023 Recap

When the New York Giants signed Jackson three years ago, the idea was to bring in one of the league’s most experienced coverage defenders who could hang with some of the best receivers and make their lives difficult on Sundays.

The first two seasons were quite successful at doing that, as Jackson hunkered down and kept his matchups to under 338 yards per season and four total touchdowns in a combined 1,369 snaps. His opponent reception percentage also dropped to near 50% by the end of 2022, an improvement by a player that was once allowing as high as 80% in the same category in Tennessee.

However, the numbers have seemed to regress to the mean this fall when Jackson looks to showcase his value in pursuing a new deal with the Giants. In 759 total snaps, Jackson has made 63 tackles, one forced fumble, and one interception returned for a touchdown, the former stat being the third highest of his NFL career.

The third-year Giant has done a good job keeping top targets out of the endzone, with just two touchdowns allowed for the third consecutive year. Yet, the area where he has started to struggle again is his efficiency in coverage, and it’s even worsened when he’s been called back to the outside corner position amid injuries to the roster.

According to PFF, Jackson played in 451 coverage snaps throughout his 17 starts, with 115 coming from the slot and the rest as the outside guy. In that period, he allowed just two touchdowns and responded with one of his own on an interception in Week 16 against the Philadelphia Eagles.

At the same time, he was consistently targeted on deep routes and fell victim to them with his combination of poor tackling and reads. Jackson gave up an average of 13.9 yards per reception on 54 of 82 passes (65.9%) thrown his direction, which was both career-high numbers. He also gave up 382 yards after contact, whiffing on missed tackles at a rate of 15.7%, the poorest percentage since the 2020 season.

One side of Jackson’s performance might have resulted from the acclimation period from switching into the slot role to allow Banks and Hawkins III to develop into outside coverage specialists. Before 2023, Jackson had played no more than 88 snaps per season as a slot corner nor aligned himself at any other area of the field, thereby putting himself in a place of unfamiliarity.

On the other end, some of Jackson’s miscues were so head-scratching that it led to concerns of effort from one of the eldest players on the Giants roster, who is coming to the end of his deal with a struggling franchise. The veteran was more than willing to accept the challenge from defensive coordinator Wink Martindale over the summer. However, there still seemed to be a disconnect between his character and Sunday playmaking.

Perhaps the time has simply passed by for Jackson, who could be out the door as the Giants look to prioritize the development of the youth in their secondary for seasons to come.

Why the Giants Should Re-sign Him

The New York Giants have a very young secondary group that is expected to remain mostly intact for the 2024 season. While Adoree Jackson is the only member slated to be an unrestricted free agent, the rest of his teammates hold less than four years of experience, including two in Deonte Banks and Tre Hawkins III, who just finished their rookie campaigns.

As mentioned earlier, the Giants likely want to focus and develop their young core of cornerbacks to sharpen them into a homegrown unit that competes with the rest of the league for years to come. Yet, outside of Banks, who had an impressive debut as the first-round pick, the rest of New York’s secondary seems a ways off from that goal, and there is no room for a long-term rebuild in this organization’s mind.

Thus, it may behoove the Giants to sit down with Jackson and determine a reasonable agreement to bring him back to East Rutherford in 2024. It’s possible his weak showing in 2023 was a mere fluke amid a rift in his usual defensive niche, but having a veteran who can generally hold down one of the most important positions on the defense is critical to short-term success.

Jackson has not had his brightest moments this season, but there are times when he can still make the big plays and has shown as much in the most important part of the field—the red zone. He’s allowed just six touchdowns in three seasons with the Giants and has been fairly good at breaking up deep shots toward the endzone.

The Giants were one of the worst teams in the NFL in opponent red zone scoring percentage this season, giving up points on a whopping 61.4% of visits at an average of 2.04 points per drive. If Jackson can line up alongside Banks and continue pressuring the best pass-catching threats, then it would be worth seeking a new, team-friendly deal with the organization.

Jackson would need to improve his coverage throughout the remainder of the field to rebound with a more prosperous season in 2024. It doesn't hurt to bring the newly cross-trained corner in Jackson back on a team-friendly deal until the training wheels can come off of guys like Hawkins, who would become his successor.

Why the Giants Shouldn't Re-sign Him

If the New York Giants want to keep a veteran cornerback around to hunker down the starting secondary but don’t see Adoree Jackson as that guy anymore, some quality replacements are entering the free agent market who could get cheaper deals and fit better into next year’s defensive system.

Jackson is shifting toward his eighth year in the NFL and will be turning 29 at the start of the 2024 season, meaning there could be concerns for age taking its toll on what has already been a downgrade to his production with the Giants. It’s clear the Giants are leaning towards a youth movement in the cornerback room, and there may not be space for one nearing his thirties and the inclination for injuries.

That brings up the second issue of Jackson’s career: constantly dealing with ailments that limit his availability as a starter. Since his sophomore season in 2018, Jackson has missed between four and fourteen games per season and eleven in his tenure with the Giants.

As a player expected to take on a huge responsibility of snaps for his team, this is not a trend the Giants can afford if they want their defense to be their rallying cry against the rest of the league. It’s bad enough the Giants have been one of the most injured organizations in recent years, and that needs to change if they want to succeed in all phases.

While it isn’t all his fault, part of Jackson’s struggles have come from the style of defense that New York has prioritized since his arrival. The blitz-happy system has made the Giants defense into one of the highest-blitzing units in the league and with it comes packages where the entire house is sent after the quarterback.

On occasion, the Giants could not get their pressure home, which placed the onus on the cornerbacks to handle often difficult assignments on an island. In those scenarios where the ball is thrown in under three seconds, Jackson holds a 65.2% grade and a forced incompletion rate of 10.4%, one of the lowest numbers among his free-agent competition.

Plenty of tape shows Jackson using good lateral agility and athleticism to fuel a knack for pass breakups, but it doesn’t seem to translate well once the pressure is on single coverage. It remains to be seen how the defensive scheme will look next fall amid the resignation of Martindale. Still, if it carries over a significant pressure element, it may behoove the Giants to look the other direction from a new partnership.

That said, a few free agents could meet all these needs for the Giants. A few include Chicago’s Jaylen Johnson, Cincinnati’s Chidobe Awuzie, Dallas’s Stephon Gilmore, and Indianapolis’s Kenny Moore II, all cornerbacks ranking higher than Jackson, who could be had for a two-year deal or less.

Keep or Dump?

If you believe that the New York Giants are going to hire a new defensive coordinator and that person will bring a scheme that still favors a good amount of blitzing, then it’s likely the better option is to move from Adoree Jackson and fill his veteran void with another replacement on the free agent market.

Jackson has enough experience and intangibles to survive on an NFL franchise and compete for active snaps within their depth chart. The bigger question remains: how long can he keep up what he did at college and as a young Titan without jeopardizing the success of the Giants defense, whose system didn’t jive with him under pressure?

To keep a veteran mentor around the position group, the Giants could look towards the aforementioned players or several others set to hit the free agent market who could command cheaper deals and fit the system. 

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