Blue & Gold Illustrated: America's Foremost Authority on Notre Dame Football
Issue link: https://comanpub.uberflip.com/i/87622
CONFIDENCE First-year starting cornerback Bennett Jackson is excelling as the season progresses AROUND THE CORNER tive edge to him," Irish head coach Brian Kelly said of the junior, who is six games into his first season as a starter in the defensive backfield. "He loves to play. He loves to nerback position in par- ticular, many coaches and pundi ts f rom around the country have talked about how poor tackling has crept into the college ranks. Notre Dame's Bennett Jackson, however, doesn't fall into either of those cat- egories. "He's got a competi- N ot every football player relishes the game's vio- lence. At the cor- BY WES MORGAN compete. He's passion- ate about what he does. He at times wears it on his sleeves. But I love to be around guys that are competitive — that com- pete in practice and love to play the game." Last season, Jackson whatever was asked of him. "That was probably the reason why I vocally had a lot of confidence in him [leading up to 2012]," Kelly explained. That is the way Jack- completed the transi- tion from wide receiver to cornerback due to the startling lack of depth at the position. While he learned from seniors Gary Gray and Robert Blanton, Jackson primar- ily saw action on special teams in all 13 contests. What Kelly saw from Jackson, whether it was on offense, special teams or defense, was a young man that poured every ounce of energy into son has always oper- ated. "I feel I definitely bring emotion to the ta- ble," said Jackson, who was fourth on the team with 23 total tackles and tied for first with senior linebacker Manti Te'o with three interceptions through five games. "When you're at such a high level … if you don't have emotion and strong feelings in what you're doing, you're not doing it as hard as you