Our own Judd Zulgad caught up this week with Tarvaris Jackson, a Vikings QB for five years (but almost certainly not a sixth). Jackson had some interesting comments, and we're going to run them through the truth wringer, PolitiFact-style. Sure, some of these truths will be subjective. But that won't stop us from grading his statements on a 1-10 scale (1 being least true, 10 being, like, totally true). ----
Jackson said: "It's probably time for a change. I'm grateful for the opportunity to play up here the last five years. ... [But] I'm not trying to be a backup. I'm trying to go somewhere where I have a chance, and I don't feel like I'd get that chance here. It's time to move on. No hard feelings or anything. It's a business."
Truth meter: 9. This is an accurate and self-aware statement. No quibbles. He only loses a smidgen for the "no hard feelings" part. Of course there are hard feelings. We'll get to those in a bit.
Jackson said: "Since Day 1, I don't really think I was really welcome here anyways, because nobody really knew who I was, being from a smaller school. A lot more things probably play into it, too. It's just the way things are. I can't help that."
Truth meter: 7. Again, pretty self-aware. But the small-school thing wasn't the defining factor. We wondered, too, if he was wading into some controversial territory -- putting all the cards on the table -- with the "a lot more things probably play into it, too" comment. We would have loved to hear him say he wasn't embraced here because he was a black QB. That would have opened up a GIANT can of worms and perhaps even fostered an interesting inward look from fans. But Judd dutifully asked the follow-up question, and Tarvaris didn't go there.
Jackson said: "Just the way things happened, like the way I was thrown into there, the way where it was me or Brett [Favre] or all this stuff. Just a lot of different things played into it that kind of soured our relationship. Fans are going to be fans."
Truth meter: 4. Some things about the Jackson era weren't entirely fair to him, including the 2009 saga of "will Brett Favre arrive or not?" But much of that was brought on by Tarvaris himself. If he's now looking for an opportunity to be a starter, he had plenty of them in his five years here. You can't complain about being thrown into the fire on one hand, and complain about being replaced on the other hand. His best and most fair chance probably came in 2008, when he was in his third year. He put up his best overall numbers, including a 95.4 passer rating, but the things that haunted him throughout his career were still very prevalent in that season: he had a hard time staying healthy, and even when he got on a little roll, you always had a bad feeling it could all come crashing down because of a dumb mistake. The playoff game against the Eagles sealed his fate. It's not a good idea to jump in the air and throw the ball in mid-leap. It's even worse when that becomes your patented move.
Jackson said of his relationship with Brad Childress, to whom he has not spoken since the coach was fired: "It was up and down. It was kind of a weird relationship. I felt like he was backing me, but sometimes it was kind of hard to think that. He just was doing his job the way he felt like he had to do it. Even some of the things I didn't like that he did, I just had to respect that if he's the head coach and if you're going to do it, you're going to do it your way."
