• Typecasting. Recruiting gurus varied on the extent of their hype -- Rivals' opinion was by far the highest, tagging him as the No. 2 overall player in Louisiana and the No. 2 incoming cornerback in the entire 2009 class -- but everyone generally agreed on Jackson's blue-chip status, and he was certainly one of the coups of Lane Kiffin's late push at Tennessee thanks to an 11th-hour defection from the home-state favorite, LSU. As expected, Jackson broke into the Vols' thin safety rotation right away, starting the second game of the season against UCLA and entrenching himself opposite All-American Eric Berry by midseason. Tennessee fans go to sleep at night with visions of Jackson as the second coming of Berry dancing in their heads.
No matter what he does on the field, though, Jackson (very much unlike the clean-cut Berry) will spend the next three years bearing the label and short leash of a "character risk" thanks to his role alongside fellow freshmen Nu'Keese Richardson and Mike Edwards in the season's most high-profile player arrest, for allegedly sticking up a random customer outside a Knoxville gas station (which just so happened to be one of many in town owned by former UT lineman Jim Haslam, benefactor of the single largest donation in the history of the university). As it turns out, that role was clearly "wrong place, wrong time, wrong friends" -- police quickly dropped all charges against Jackson, who was welcomed back to the team for the regular season finale against Kentucky and the bowl game after Richardson and Edwards had been permanently booted with charges still hanging over their heads -- but the red flag isn't coming down any time soon.
• Best-case. Jackson finished tenth on the team in tackles but would have come in much higher if he'd started the opener (he played but didn't record a tackle in the blowout win over Western Kentucky) and avoided the three-game absence following the robbery arrest. Before the suspension, he'd recorded a season-high seven tackles and forced a fumble in the win over South Carolina; when he returned for the last two games, he registered his first career sack against Kentucky and then his first interception in the bowl game, returning it 29 yards to set up a touchdown against Virginia Tech.
Six of the eight players voted to the coaches' All-SEC team in the secondary either graduated or left early for the NFL, leaving an opening for Jackson to establish himself not only as the best DB at Tennessee, but as one of the best in the conference. Based on the potential suggested by his recruiting hype, by this time next year Jackson could easily be getting sized up as a top pick in the 2012 draft.
• Worst-case. Assuming he keeps his nose clean, the two biggest issues Jackson faces are a) His size, and b) The adjustment to a new scheme under new defensive coordinator Justin Wilcox. There are no questions about his speed, but Tennessee lists Jackson at 6'0', 180 pounds, which might be generous on both counts, and doesn't suggest a consistent presence as an in-the-box run-stuffer or as a one-on-one cover guy against some of the tall, leaping wide outs -- see Julio Jones, A.J. Green, Alshon Jeffery -- the SEC schedule will throw at him on a weekly basis. And Wilcox, a Boise State import who accepted the job last month after at least three other, more experienced targets reportedly turned new head coach Derek Dooley down. The 33-year-old Wilcox, who's spent his entire career in the Pacific Northwest, couldn't be more of a polar opposite than grizzled, well-traveled oracle Monte Kiffin, and may have entirely different ideas about how to exploit Jackson in his schemes.
• From the Inside. Lifelong Vol fan Clay Travis, blogger, radio host and author of perhaps the best book ever devoted entirely to Tennessee football, has been around long enough to see both sides of the five-star coin in the UT secondary -- the disciplined first-round draft pick on one hand, and the perpetual troublemaker who spends part of his erratic college career living out of his car on the other:
"No one at Tennessee doubts that Jackson has the physical talents to follow in Eric Berry's footsteps and become the next Vol safety to be drafted in the first round. But no one at Tennessee can forget the lessons learned from another five-star safety who started as a freshman in 2005 and seemed destined for greatness, Demetrice Morley. The two paths, Berry and Morley, stand in stark contrast. Will Jackson become a multi-millionaire superstar or end up kicked off the football team?
There's probably not a middle ground for Janzen Jackson, meaning there may be no player in America with more uncertainty surrounding his future prospects, tremendous success or abject failure. Given that he was on the path to freshman All-American status before his career at Tennessee almost ended in last November's infamous gas station robbery caper, there is no clear indication of which path Jackson will end up following. The uncertainty is even more pronounced when you consider that he will now be playing for an entirely new defensive staff at Tennessee, one that didn't recruit him and may not have the same loyalties or deference to a recruiting jewel of the Lane Kiffin regime. For the next two years, everyone in Knoxville is holding their breath."
• What to Expect in '10. Jackson saw the field right away, played well and quickly found his way back into the lineup following a P.R. catastrophe, all good signs that he's a fixture in the lineup for the foreseeable future. He didn't flash the play-making panache that made Berry an instant star in his first season, but was around the ball often enough and did enough good things at the end of the year -- a forced fumble, a sack and an interception in his last three games -- to expect more big plays from here on. If he makes it to the end of his sophomore season healthy and unburdened by any more offseason incidents, it will probably be as one of the most respected defenders in the league.
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