In his first two seasons of college football, Keyshawn Jackson has always worked his way onto the field.
As a true freshman at East Carolina, he made his way onto special teams and played in 11 of the Pirates’ 12 games. He transferred to the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga a year later and helped in the same capacity, although as time went on he started to develop at cornerback.
He played in seven games last year on special teams and as a reserve at cornerback, logging 10 tackles and breaking up a pair of passes.
After a season of development, he’s ready to help make his mark in the Mocs’ revamped secondary, which is replacing four primary starters from a year ago.
“He’s worked really hard at it,” head coach Rusty Wright said. “I think it’s important for him to be good. I think he wants to be good, so that’s a big part of it, but I think he’s also worked hard to try and be good. He’s going to keep developing and he’s going to get his opportunity to truly start for the first time this year and we’ll see how he does.”
The 6-foot-3, 186-pound Jackson is in line to start opposite senior and former Cleveland standout D.J. Adams, and the pair has the confidence and the skill sets to be successful. Now cornerbacks coach Kenny Lucky has added the technique.
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“They are very confident,” Lucky said. “They both can play in space and play to the short side. They both have enough length. I’m excited to see if there’s times where I’m able to get one of them a break, one of them stays in, get another guy a rep and then being able to switch back and forth, so that’s what I’m looking forward to.”
Lucky said he challenged Jackson to really work on his body this offseason and that the junior “gained weight, got twitchier and he’s a leader in our room.”
“He leads by example, but he also has developed verbal leadership,” Lucky said. “He and I talked about getting better at communication skills. He loves this; he really does. He loves the game and just watching him mature this year has been fun, man. He’s matured a lot this year.”
Jackson realized that he needed to take last season to “unlearn a lot of bad habits,” specifically his pad level, bending his knees more and improving his feet and hands. That didn’t make it any easier as he mostly had to watch the Mocs limp — literally, given the wave of injuries on defense, as well as figuratively — to a 5-7 record in 2025.
“It was a struggle at first. Every ballplayer wants to be on the field, but Coach Wright and Coach Lucky, they talked to me. They really just wanted me to learn it,” Jackson said. “They didn’t want me to go out there and mess up, so they really focused on calming me down, telling me it’s good and to just learn it.
“When you learn it, you’re going to play way better than you not knowing what you’re doing out there. So it was tough at first, but I think once I really learned it and then stepped out there and started putting stuff together, it helped.”
The coaching staff believes those habits are gone, which is what has the defense excited about having a bounce-back season.
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The cornerback room calls itself “The Ballhawks,” something the defense as a whole wasn’t in 2025, when it had 14 takeaways, including nine interceptions, its fewest since 2017 when it had eight.
“We’re trying to create way more turnovers, punching at the ball, forcing big tackles, snatching the ball out of the air, strip sacks on the quarterback,” Jackson said. “We just want the ball and that’s what we really do in practice. We slow everything down, working on punching at the ball, focusing our eyes on the ball when we catch picks, tucking the ball in, going straight to the sideline when we catch it, stuff like that.”
The Mocs open the season on Aug. 27 at West Georgia.
Contact Gene Henley at ghenley@timesfreepress.com.