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RapSheet Bomb: JC Jackson is Not Making the Trip to Germany Due to 'Questions About His Reliability'

Adam Glanzman. Getty Images.

Not that we needed it, but here's some fresh hell for Patriots fans:

Well this is just great. And it doesn't take Indiana Jones to dig for clues as to what the issues are. I wrote about this not 48 hours ago. Though I assumed JC Jackson's problems were limited to his time with the Chargers:

ESPN - Many within the [Chargers] organization believed Jackson approached practices with a "lackadaisical" attitude and didn't respond well to coaching, according to team sources. In the Chargers' Week 4 game against the Las Vegas Raiders, Jackson refused to go in after he was benched for the first three quarters, telling coaches he wasn't warmed up enough, according to team sources.

In that same game, quarterback Justin Herbert played with a fractured left middle finger, an injury in which Herbert's bone punctured his skin. Herbert didn't miss any snaps. The juxtaposition of those moments was the final straw for the Chargers, according to team sources. …

Jackson had been approaching practice and meetings without a "sense of urgency," team sources said. He didn't respond well to Chargers defensive coaches who reprimanded him the same way they did others for missed assignments or calls, team sources said.  

When the Chargers benched Jackson in Week 3, these habits only got worse, team sources said. 

But it seemed to me that whatever problems Jackson had, he left them behind in LA. Because he's been balling out since Belichick traded him for a swap of late round picks in 2025. Like I wrote:

You might need a the James Webb Space Telescope to search the universe to find any bright spots from yesterday's loss to Washington. But if you did, the very short list could very well include JC Jackson. In a game in which the Patriots allowed Sam Howell to complete 29 passes for 325 yards, Jackson was targeted twice, both in coverage on Byron Pringle, giving up one catch for 16 yards. Despite playing 53 total snaps.

Which is pretty much par for Jackson's New England course since the Patriots reacquired him from the Chargers a month and a half ago. In his five games since coming back, he's given up a catch rate of just over 50% and less than 40 yards a game. This despite spending a lot of time sticking with the opposition's top target. His seamless transition back to Foxboro has helped mitigate the disaster that was losing Christian Gonzalez for the season better than even the most shameless Patriots optimist [my hand raises itself] could've ever hoped for. 

With Jackson bringing all that effectiveness to a defense badly in need of it, whatever "questions about his reliability" there are have to be the result of something truly egregious. The only conclusion you can draw is that he's been somewhere between "high maintenance" and "a colossal pain in the ass" for Belichick to pull the plug on him so early in the week. So much so that the coaches feel like they'd be better off just giving his snaps to Jack Jones (who at least confined his issues to Logan Airport in the offseason) or (shudder) Myles Bryant. And like a kid who's been acting up in class, they're not letting him go on the fun field trip. They'd rather keep him back at school, sitting in the Assistant Principal's office doing busy work because funtivities like seeing Germany are a privilege, not a right. 

Now it's a question of whether or not he'll come back from the bye "in a better place." But the way the rest of this season has gone, I wouldn't bet on it. Every time you think it's as bad as it can possibly be, 2023 still finds a way to get worse.