Blue & Gold Illustrated: America's Foremost Authority on Notre Dame Football
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A week after leaving Miami, Jackson dragged himself out of isolation to share a meal with family and friends in Hazlet, N.J. His mother and grandmother were there in the house where they raised him, four blocks from Raritan High School. So were a few of his high school football coaches, the athletics director and a small group of others from the school whom Jackson never fails to visit when he has the chance to return home. His disappointment from the loss had not subsided much from when most of them had last seem him by the team bus in Miami, but they knew to expect that. Jackson has never taken kindly to losing. He talked about the next step — offseason workouts, spring practice, silencing critics again the as a first-year starter at cornerback in 2012. He's a semester away from being a college graduate and is on pace to be an NFL draft pick in less than a year. The Competitor Everyone at Raritan, a 1,000-student high school across the bay from Staten Island, has a story to tell about Jackson. They all eagerly start the same way: with praise for his unchanging humility — a product of his mother and grandmother, they say — and pride that he is one of their own. They talk about how well he treats his friends and their families. Next, they mention his passion and then venture off into different tales about one incredible athletic feat Shoulder Surgeries Abound In South Bend Senior Bennett Jackson watched most of Notre Dame's spring practice from the sidelines while recovering from shoulder surgery in January. He had plenty of company. Three other defensive contributors for the Irish — fifth-year senior linebacker Dan Fox, sophomore safety Nicky Baratti and junior defensive end Chase Hounshell — all had similar procedures to repair damage in their shoulders during the offseason. Senior safety Austin Collinsworth had the same procedure done at the end of last year's spring season. Offensive tackle Tate Nichols and linebacker/defensive end Anthony Rabasa joined that club as freshmen in 2011. Incoming freshman lineman John Montelus may be next in line. Team doctors said the rash of shoulder surgeries is not a result of overuse or exercises that stress the joint more than they should. Dr. James Moriarity, who stepped down from his post as the football team's main doctor this year, says the uptick is more likely a mixture of coincidence and their growing confidence in how effective the procedure can be and how minimal its side effects are. Hounshell's injury, his second torn labrum in less than a year, was more significant than the others and will keep him out of action for the entire 2013 season. Most of the rest of the group technically could have continued to play without any procedure, but the benefits of surgery outweighed the recovery period and any risks. The glenoid labrum is a ring of soft tissue that wraps around the end of the shoulder blade and provides a cushion, almost like shock absorbers, to the ball-and-socket joint when it is jarred. Small nicks and tears in the muscle can cause the shoulder to slide out of place when it is knocked around. Like a tear in any fabric, the more it is stressed the more it grows. In the past, repairing these imperfections required invasive surgery that led to long recovery periods. It was more trouble to fix the problem than it was to just play through the inconvenience and pain. Thanks to advances in arthroscopic surgery and large advances in the rehabilitation process during the past decade, shoulder surgeries for labrum repair have become much more common. Jackson and his teammates were healthy enough to get their feet wet with non-contact drills by the end of the spring, four months after undergoing surgery. Jackson said he expected to be cleared for contact a month later. — Dan Murphy following fall. This was new. This was a different image of Jackson than the one that hung in the Raritan Sports Hall of Fame four blocks away. This was a more mature Jackson, learning how to harness the flames of defeat and turn them into fuel. "He used to have a short fuse. No doubt about it," said John DeGenito, Raritan's athletics director who has known Jackson since he mentored him as a middle school principal. "I think he's gone from being reactive to reflective. That's made him what he is today." Today Jackson is the senior leader of Notre Dame's secondary and an agendasetting voice for the entire Irish defense, a group that finished second in the nation in points allowed a year ago. Jackson is Notre Dame's leading returning tackler. He made 65 stops to go with his four interceptions or another. Hurdling upright defenders on his way to the end zone in some cases, kicking 35-yard field goals in the rain or state championship track performances in others. Jackson's athletic ability was apparent in middle school when he helped to lead the Hazlet Pop Warner team to a national championship in Disney World. He got his first taste for winning on a grand scale there, and he's been willing to accept nothing less since then. "I think from the time he was a youngster that's how that competitiveness really came to play," said Keith Rescorl, better known to his players as Coach Bone, the old assistant coach that wrapped Jackson in a bear hug down in Miami. "That's been his M.O. forever, and you don't want that to be gone. That's what makes Bennett Jackson Bennett Jackson." Jackson's coaches all said he poured everything he had into winning, which was both a blessing and a curse at times. When Raritan lost, Jackson couldn't understand why some of his teammates didn't push harder. He didn't understand why the ball wasn't in his hands when the team needed to win. When things went wrong in practice his face would lock in a scowl that soon became infamous to Rescorl and Jackson's teammates. By the time Jackson was a junior at Raritan, he was the team's star wide receiver. He was the kicker and the kick returner. He wanted to play defense, too, but Raritan rarely, if ever, used two-way players. The summer before his senior year he participated in a 10-mile charity bike ride along with the team's defensive coordinator at the time, Anthony Petruzzi. He rode the whole race next to his coach's ear imploring Petruzzi to give him a shot in the secondary. The next fall, Jackson added defensive back to his résumé. "It's not like I was going to out-pedal him," Petruzzi said. Jackson's first year on defense was a sneak preview of what was to come. Notre Dame recruited him as a wide receiver. When Brian Kelly's staff took over two months before Jackson signed, they also wanted Jackson to play on offense. As much as Jackson wanted the ball in his hands, too, he was developing a knack for tackling. A year later, a season in which Jackson won the Irish Special Teams Player of the Year award as a freshman for returning kicks and tracking down opponents on kick and punt coverage, he moved permanently to cornerback. Jackson spent the following year learning how to attack opponents and stick with wide receivers behind senior cornerbacks Robert Blanton and Gary Gray on the depth chart. After a frustrating 8-5 season on the sidelines, Jackson vaulted into the position of a veteran in a dangerously thin cornerbacks group in the spring. When he got there he found one more hurdle he had to leap. Shoulder Issues The initial tear in Jackson's right shoulder occurred sometime during his sophomore year when the Irish cornerback was still mostly a special teams mainstay. The real problems didn't start until that following spring. That's when the shoulder started to slide in and out of its socket at times during practice. It usually slipped back into place on its own. But for the few minutes that followed Jackson's arm would be dead weight, numb until he was able to get the blood flowing properly again. 98 ✦ Blue & Gold Illustrated 2013 Football Preview 96-99.Bennett Jackson.indd 98 6/25/13 11:13 AM