Stopping Fred Jackson won't be easy for Jets
It's nothing new for a football player to complain that he isn't getting enough respect. But it appears as though Buffalo's Fred Jackson has a fairly unique beef.
The running back has been instrumental in Buffalo's 5-2 start, but at the beginning of the season, he couldn't even get a vote of confidence from his wife.
Jackson's wife, Danielle, is in a fantasy football league, and when she sat down for the preseason draft, she apparently wasn't sure how many carries her husband would be getting. Jackson told reporters in Buffalo that his wife didn't draft him until the fifth round. She chose the Falcons' Michael Turner as her first running back.
"I told her I'm not going to continue to sit here if you're skipping over me in these rounds. If you don't take me, I'm going to call your brother and tell him to pick me up," Jackson said with a laugh.
Now, as the Bills head into Sunday's game against the Jets, he's beginning to get his proper respect. Jackson, who is averaging 5.5 yards per carry, enters the game as the NFL's No. 4 rusher with 721 yards. He is second in the league in yards from scrimmage with 1,074.
Turner? He ranks seventh and 15th, respectively.
"He's an unbelievable athlete and incredibly strong," Jets linebacker and former teammate Aaron Maybin said. "He's also a determined guy. You look at his story and where he's come and how much he's been able to accomplish, he's a fighter. He's someone as a defense you have to make sure you always know where he is on the football field. He's a major weapon for them."
Jackson certainly didn't come to the NFL via the traditional route. Undrafted out of tiny Division III Coe College, he played Arena football and for the NFL in Europe before landing in Buffalo.
Once he got to the Bills, he had to sit behind Marshawn Lynch much of the time -- until this season.
"In the past, we thought he was better than some of the starters they had," Darrelle Revis said. "Now he has a starting role and he's doing what he needs to do. They feel confident in him and want to get him the ball."
This season, Jackson has really brought an air of excitement to the team. He enters Sunday with nine runs of 20-plus yards, tying him for first with the Bears' Matt Forte. One of the most memorable of those runs was an 80-yard touchdown against the Giants in Week 6.
The Jets have struggled to stop the run this season and rank 25th in the league in run defense, giving up 126.9 rushing yards per game. They have outrushed an opponent only once, in their win over the San Diego Chargers two weeks ago.
Most of the Jets see Jackson as an incredibly hard player to bring down, especially in the Bills' spread offense.
"I think he's someone that's had that ability for a long time, but I think this year their offense is just finding their groove," Maybin said. "You have to play fantastic football to stop him. He's a guy that breaks a lot of tackles."
He's also a guy who finally is getting the credit he deserves. Jackson announced this week that the team has said it will renegotiate the final two years of his contract.
He apparently also is negotiating extra compensation from his wife.
"She told me she's happy she got me," he told The Buffalo News. "She's in first place right now. I told her I want half of the winnings."
