With Avonte Maddox out, the Eagles are working out former 1st-round cornerback William Jackson III today according to Jordan Schultz of the Schultz Report.
Jackson, 30, spent the first four years of his career with the Bengals and the last two seasons with Washington. He’s played in 75 games with 64 starts.
Maddox, the Eagles’ lead slot corner, underwent surgery for a torn pec and is out indefinitely. But Jackson has been almost exclusively an outside corner in his six NFL seasons. According to Pro Football Focus, he’s played only 203 of 3,888 career snaps in the slot – about 5 percent.
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James Bradberry missed the Vikings game with a concussion he suffered in the season opener against the Patriots, but the Eagles are hopeful he’ll be back for their game in Tampa on Monday night.
The Eagles gave Bradberry a significant amount of work in the slot during training camp, so it's conceivable that with Maddox out Bradberry could move inside, so if that happens help at outside corner would make sense.
After Maddox got hurt Thursday in the second quarter, undrafted Mario Goodrich took over in the slot.
Jackson has one thing the Eagles don’t have a lot of with their backup corners – experience. Josh Jobe made his first career start Thursday night, Goodrich played in his first NFL game, Eli Ricks made his NFL debut against Minnesota and played one defensive snap and rookie Kelee Ringo has played one defensive snap in two games. Jobe, Goodrich and Ricks are all undrafted. Ringo was the Eagles' 4th-round pick out of Georgia in April.
NFL
The four healthy corners behind Darius Slay and Bradberry have played a combined 119 career snaps - 78 for Jobe, 39 for Goodrich (all Thursday) and one each for Ringo and Ricks.
Jackson began his college career at Trinity Valley Community College in Athens, Texas, before spending one year at Houston, where the Cougars went 13-1, were ranked 8th in the final BCS poll and won the Peach Bowl in Atlanta over Florida State with Greg Ward at quarterback.
The Bengals made him the 24th pick in the 2016 draft – he was the fourth cornerback taken. He missed his rookie year with a torn pec suffered at training camp then started five games as a rookie before becoming a full-time starter in 2018.
He signed a three-year, $40.5 million contract with Washington before the 2021 season but played only 16 games for Washington before he was benched and then traded in the middle of last season to the Steelers, where he was a teammate of current Eagles safety Terrell Edmunds. But he never played for Pittsburgh and was released in March.
According to PFF, Jackson graded at 90.2 as a rookie and 73.4 in Year 2, but he’s been below 60 in each of the last two seasons.
Jackson, who worked out for at least the Giants and Ravens during the summer, has five career interceptions but none since November of 2021 against the Buccaneers.