veteran safety Kareem Jackson has served his four-game suspension and is eligible to return to the active roster this week with a Christmas Eve tilt with the New England Patriots on deck. However, it’s Friday, and Jackson still hasn’t been reinstated onto the roster. We have until Monday with his roster exemption,” head coach Sean Payton said on Thursday. “Officially by Monday, if he comes up, someone else has to come down. We’re at 53 plus him, and then we’ll figure out how we’ll handle it relative to this week and going forward.”
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.
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.
