Belichick and Payton are cut from the same Bill Parcells cloth, so New England’s venerated head coach will likely anticipate Jackson’s roster standing being used in Denver’s poker hand, so to speak. Then again, as good as Jackson has been throughout his career, we’re not talking about some perennial All-Pro here.
The Broncos are dragging their feet on bringing Jackson back, and there could be a couple of reasons for it. One of them, as Payton intimated, is the roster-math decision of cutting a player in order to make room on the 53.
That’s not easy for a team to do this deep into the season, but it’s one that NFL teams typically make in a heartbeat if it means adding a difference-making veteran back onto the roster, whether it’s from injured reserve or, in Jackson’s case, a suspension.
The other reason could be that Payton wants to keep Bill Belichick guessing this week on whether the Patriots can expect to see Jackson patrolling the Broncos’ secondary or if it’ll remain the Justin Simmons and P.J. Locke show. If I had to guess, I’d err on the side of the latter — a slight competitive edge in keeping the veteran’s standing under wraps.
