MONTGOMERY, Ala. (AP) - Tarvaris Jackson stood in the six-hole, right of second base with teammate Brandon Dean.
The baseball season had just begun, and Jackson, a confident and athletic 10th-grader, was already proclaiming “I’m going to take somebody’s spot out here!” Dean said.
Dean, the elder by two years, looked at Jackson and tried not to show his worry. He was thinking, “Well, I hope it won’t be me.”
The two began to take some ground balls, and “I saw his arm speed,” Dean continued, “and I said ‘Wow, this guy is serious.’ You could tell then he had the arm speed and velocity to be a great quarterback.”
Jackson was just coming off his first season as the starting quarterback at Sidney Lanier High School and assistant baseball coach Jesse ‘Big Eye’ Gaston had “tricked” Jackson to come out for the baseball team, Dean said.
And though he impressed, Dean kept his job because it wasn’t more than two days later that Lanier offensive coordinator and quarterback coach at the time, Richard Moncrief, came out to the field and removed Jackson from the team.
“And that was the end of baseball for him,” Dean said. “But you could see he was an athlete. He loved to compete.”
That was in 1999, and is Dean’s clearest memory of his time spent with Jackson.
Today, however, Jackson is gone, and people such as Dean, family, friends and fans of Jackson are left with memories. On Sunday night, Jackson lost his life in a single-car crash on Pike Road.
According to Alabama State troopers, Jackson’s car veered off the road and hit a tree, overturning in the process. Jackson was transported to a nearby hospital and was later pronounced dead.
In the wake of the accident, Montgomery lost a person near and dear to its heart.
Jackson is best known nationally for his stints in the NFL with the Minnesota Vikings, Seattle Seahawks and Buffalo Bills. But in Montgomery he was known as Sidney Lanier’s star quarterback, who left his hometown for the University of Arkansas in 2001 only to return to his roots and bring his hometown team - Alabama State - back to glory.
“When he transferred back to ASU - along with Keldrick Williams - in 2003, that galvanized the ASU fan base,” Dean said. By 2004, the Hornets would be SWAC champions behind Jackson’s MVP performance in the SWAC Championship game.
The 2005 second-team All-SWAC selection, threw for 5,217 yards and 45 touchdowns between the 2004 and 2005 seasons before being drafted by the Vikings in the second round of the 2006 NFL draft, making him the first Hornet signal-caller to be drafted in more than a decade.
And he did it all right from home, right from the city that loved him. He was its prodigal son.
“He loved his city,” said Keldrick Williams, who played with Jackson from middle school to Lanier to their time at ASU. “And I think the city in return loved him back, especially once he and I decided to come back home.”
Highly recruited out of high school, Jackson and Williams both chose out-of-state SEC schools - Arkansas and Tennessee, respectively.
But following some hardship - a season-ending injury his freshman year followed by a medical-redshirt the next, for Jackson, and some general unhappiness with his situation at Tennessee for Williams - the two decided to discuss transferring.
“It was one of those things where, once we got to where we were and we felt like things weren’t going in our favor,” Williams said. “I called him up and asked him how he was holding up. He was a little bit frustrated.
“So, we both decided we’d think about transferring, and we started talking a little bit. We didn’t want to transfer to another (D-I FBS) university, because I know back then you had to sit out a year. We were ready to get back on the field, so we really thought about it and talked about returning to ASU and getting a chance to start something special back home.”
And they did with multiple SWAC Championship appearances and a title in 2004.
“Looking back at it and us talking as teammates, I think he cherished that SWAC championship ring just as much as he cherished his Super Bowl ring (he won with the Seahawks in 2014),” said Antonio Bradford, tight ends and tackles coach at Tennessee State Monday, but starting offensive lineman for the Hornets at the time.
Bradford said from day one of Jackson’s transfer to ASU he was ready to work. There was no ego, no entitlement, only a sense of belonging and hunger to compete.
This approach won over the team.
“When Jack (Jackson) transferred in from the University of Arkansas, he was a guy that came in and earned his respect,” Bradford said. “You see a lot of guys that come and transfer and sometimes they feel like they need to have a chip on their shoulder, and think they’re better than some of the players that are already there…the job wasn’t given to him, he earned it.”
This became the theme of Jackson’s return to Montgomery.
When Reggie Barlow, Jackson’s quarterback coach in 2005 and former ASU standout, himself, from 1992-1995, looks back at Jackson the football player two distinct moments stand out in his mind.
Both played in the Gulf City Classic between ASU and Southern, Jackson’s senior season in 2005.
“There was a throw he made,” said Barlow, who played six seasons in the NFL with the Jags, Raiders, and Bucs. “We were playing in the Gulf Coast Classic, and he threw a comeback route from the far hash off to the left. You know, I am a former NFL receiver and I was like ‘Dang that was a throw right there. A college kid making that kind of throw, that’s big league. That’s the NFL right there.’”
Later in the game, Jackson broke off a run on a play they called “Dart.” Barlow used to always tease Jackson about his speed or lack thereof, he said, but Jackson “was able to run away from everybody and score on that play, and those are the two plays that I really remember,” as the makeup of a potential NFL career.
That day, Jackson proved to Barlow that he had the potential to play at the next level, and the work Jackson put in backed up that notion, Barlow said.
“Tarvaris is tough on the outer surface, he was a tough kid,” Barlow continued. “A no-nonsense type of guy.
“When it was time to work, he was committed to putting the work in, and it wasn’t any negotiation with that. For the guys that played with him, if they didn’t work out, if they didn’t train the way that he trained in the summertime, that was a problem for him and he would attack that problem.”
Williams said Jackson was a competitor at all times but did it with a good nature. “He expected excellence out of everyone…he had that leadership presence, that aura that when you got around him you just wanted to give him your best, because you knew he was going to give you his.”
But in the same breath he was not afraid to call you out if your play lacked. He held his teammates accountable to greatness, and they respected it, Bradford said.
“Not only did he lead by example and worked hard on the field,” Bradford said, “but he forced you to become better.”
This is what created success for Jackson on the football field and drove the Hornets to a championship. This nature bolstered the talent he already possessed and gave him an opportunity to be drafted as high as he did.
This is what conceived a 10-season NFL career, where Jackson amassed 7,263 yards passing, 39 passing touchdowns and a 17-17 record in 34 career starts.
“From a football standpoint, since (Steve) McNair, Tarvaris was the highest drafted black college football player at the quarterback position, in that second round,” Barlow said. “And it hadn’t happened since then, so that tells you what type of player he was.”
But underneath his talent, the tough-skin and a cut-throat competitiveness was a man that Barlow called a “softie” - someone who was very easy to love.
This is the man that Williams knew the best, growing up Jackson.
“If you knew Tarvaris,” Williams said, “it was always kind of like ‘Let’s just have a good time.’ He just wanted to enjoy your presence.”
It’s the little things that made spending time with Jackson so meaningful, Williams said. That’s why when he reflects on some of their best moments, they are just a collection of simple times spent with a close friend.
Such as the time Williams burnt their egg sandwich before a summer practice. The two were running late and were just trying to make a quick bite to eat and in Williams’ haste the sandwich suffered and so did their appetites. “We were just cracking up laughing,” he said. “Just little things like that.”
Jackson’s connection with the pulse of Montgomery is largely representative of who he was, those closest to him say. He gave back with camps and mentorship initiatives for local youth throughout his career and made sure he was an active presence where it all started for him.
“He was just so genuine,” said Kenyetta Miller, principal at Morningview Elementary who witnessed Jackson’s interactions with her students. “He was just as excited as the students to hear him, to speak to them. Whenever he came to town, he pretty much just showed up. It wasn’t always an invitation. Sometimes it was a call to say ‘Can I come by to talk to the children?’ He was just excited about communicating with them about doing what it takes be successful.”
It was never too much for him to return. It was an investment.
“He did free camps the entire time he was in the NFL,” Barlow said. “Everything was free. Feed the kids, T-shirts, had all types of former NFL players there. So, we lost a guy that cared about his community, and we lost a friend.”
Whether teammates, friends or family got married, he was there. Whether it was a simple cookout or special event, he was reachable. Jackson was never too far way.
“He was away from Montgomery for a long time,” Bradford said. “And he always found a way back to give back. A lot of guys got married, some deaths and even through gray times, he just always had time enough to come back and share those moments.”
The entirety of Jackson’s character lay in Montgomery, and though he would spend significant time away from the city that made him, it always seemed to call him back.
Following his NFL career, Jackson joined the Hornets coaching staff in 2018 as an offensive quality control coach. And before joining Tennessee State in 2019, Jackson called Bradford about wanting to make coaching a more permanent move.
Bradford convinced TSU head football coach Rod Reed to bring Jackson on, and he came ready to compete, per usual.
In his first year at TSU, Jackson faced adversity, Bradford said, after TSU lost both its first- and second- string quarterback to injury.
But no matter the circumstance, Jackson will get the best out of you, Bradford said, and TSU third-string quarterback Cameron Rosendahl, thrived under his tutelage throwing for 3,023 yards in 2019, the second highest mark in school history and setting TSU’s completions record in a season with 241.
“To see the success that (Rosendahl) had and to be able to coach a kid that had some talent but hadn’t played a full season in two years and to get the production that he got out of Cameron was phenomenal,” Bradford said. “There’s just so much respect that I have for Jack (Jackson) as a player, as a coach, as a person.”
The next step of Jackson’s life and career had just gotten underway before his passing. And Bradford said there was so much more he could have offered the football world with his coaching and knowledge of the game.
But once again, Montgomery called him back.
“A person like that, a guy that had a ton of success after college, he stayed the same guy, and was reachable. You could reach out and touch him, and call and laugh and joke,” Bradford said. “It was like we were still at Hornet Stadium warming up and joking. It was tremendous. Man, he was that type of guy.”
Jackson is survived by his wife, Lakitta Jackson, and three children: Tarvaris, Takayla and Tyson.
Please read our comment policy before commenting.