D'Marco
Jackson.
D'Marco
Jackson.
Appalachian St.· 6'1"· 233 lb· 4.55s 40
Jackson is a 233-pound downhill linebacker who plays through contact rather than around it. He diagnoses the run quickly, takes a direct path to the ball and finishes with force, which is how he stacked 119 tackles as a senior and won Sun Belt Defensive Player of the Year.
The blitz is his second weapon: six sacks in 2021 came almost entirely on timed pressures where he read the protection and hit the gap before the back could fill. A 4.55 forty with a 1.53 ten-yard split confirms the burst. Coverage is the open question. He is a zone-drop linebacker with good instincts and adequate range, but he is not an athlete who matches tight ends down the seam or carries backs out of the backfield in man.
Single-high or match-quarters defense that keeps its linebackers in zone drops and lets the will or mike attack downhill against the run.
Year 1: four-phase special teams core with base-package linebacker snaps. Ceiling: starting mike who calls the defense on early downs.
A man-heavy scheme that asks its linebackers to travel with tight ends and cover backs one-on-one on every third down.
Point him at the ball and he is a starter; ask him to run with a tight end and he is not.
D'Marco Jackson 2021 Highlights | Appalachian State LB
Full reel from his Sun Belt Defensive Player of the Year season: downhill run fits and timed blitzes.
D'Marco Jackson's NFL Draft Profile
Pre-draft breakdown of the traits and the coverage questions scouts had in 2022.
D'Marco Jackson (2025-2026) Highlights | Chicago Bears
His breakout run as Chicago's starting middle linebacker, including the Player of the Week performance.
Jackson was a two-star recruit out of Broome High in Spartanburg with offers from Charlotte and Georgia Southern, and he needed all five years at Appalachian State to become a draft pick. He redshirted, played all thirteen games as a redshirt freshman with 25 tackles, then broke into the rotation with 60 tackles and three sacks in 2019.
The last two seasons are the résumé. He posted 86 tackles, 2.5 sacks and two interceptions in 2020 for second-team All-Sun Belt honors, both picks coming in the same win over Arkansas State. Then he played all fourteen games in 2021 and put up 119 tackles, six sacks, five breakups, an interception and a forced fumble, sweeping first-team all-conference and Defensive Player of the Year in a league that produced multiple NFL defenders.
The testing backed the tape up: 4.55 in the forty, a 7.19 three-cone and a 10-foot-5 broad jump at 233 pounds. The reservations were level of competition and a coverage profile that looked like a third-down liability. New Orleans took him 161st overall as a special teams core player with a real path to snaps if the run-and-hit traits translated up a level.
- 01
Run diagnosis
reads keys fast and takes a direct downhill path, the trait behind a 119-tackle senior season and Sun Belt Defensive Player of the Year.
- 02
Blitz timing
six sacks in 2021 on designed and green-dog pressures, with the burst through a gap to make the pressure count.
- 03
Tackling
finishes through contact and rarely needs a second effort, with steady production growth from 25 to 60 to 86 to 119 tackles.
- 04
Testing
a 4.55 forty, 1.53 ten-yard split and 7.19 three-cone at 233 pounds place him comfortably inside NFL athletic thresholds for the position.
- 05
Special teams projection
five seasons of coverage-unit experience plus the speed and tackling profile that keeps Day 3 linebackers employed.
- 01
Man coverage
struggles to carry tight ends up the seam or mirror backs out of the backfield, which projects him as a two-down defender early.
- 02
Level of competition
Sun Belt offensive linemen did not test his ability to take on and shed NFL-caliber blocks with any consistency.
- 03
Block deconstruction
at 233 pounds with 32 1/2-inch arms he gets swallowed when a guard reaches the second level cleanly.
- 04
Age and development curve
a fifth-year senior who turned 24 in his rookie summer, so the traits he showed were close to finished product.
— — — positional median (p50)
- 40 yd
- 4.55sp50
- Vertical
- 33inp50
- Broad jump
- 125inp50
- Three-cone
- —s
- Shuttle
- —s
- Bench
- —rep
| Yr | Team | G | Tkl | Sk | Int | PD | FF |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2018 | Appalachian St. | 13 | 25 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 0 |
| 2019 | Appalachian St. | 14 | 60 | 3 | 0 | 2 | 0 |
| 2020 | Appalachian St. | 12 | 86 | 2.5 | 2 | 6 | 0 |
| 2021 | Appalachian St. | 14 | 119 | 6 | 1 | 5 | 1 |
| Career | — | 53 | 290 | 11.5 | 3 | 14 | 1 |
Tackle, sack, interception, breakup and forced fumble lines come from ESPN's college splits and sum to the 290 career tackles and 11.5 sacks those splits imply. Games played for 2018 (thirteen) and 2021 (fourteen) are confirmed in his biography, as is the 53-game career total; the 2019 and 2020 figures are the team's game counts for those seasons, which reconcile to that total. Tackles for loss are only documented for 2018 (2.0), so later seasons and the career figure are left blank rather than estimated. Appalachian State does not publish fumble recovery splits for these seasons.
A dash means the figure is not published by a source we trust — never a zero we invented.
Day 3 linebacker who builds a career on special teams and fills in as a starter when injuries hit.
Undrafted-profile thumper who becomes a high-volume starting linebacker once a team finally gives him the snaps.
Small-school linebacker whose coverage limits keep him on the practice squad and off defensive snaps.
Everything above is the pre-draft evaluation. This section is what actually happened — updated year over year.
It took four years and a change of address. Jackson lost his entire rookie season to injured reserve in August 2022, then spent 2023 and 2024 as a special teams player in New Orleans, appearing in all seventeen games one year and ten the next while recording a total of 26 tackles. The Saints waived him at 2025 final cuts and Chicago claimed him the next day.
That claim changed his career. He opened 2025 on special teams again, but injuries pushed him into the starting middle linebacker job in Week 12 against Pittsburgh, where he called the defense and led the team with fifteen tackles in a 31-28 win. Three weeks later he recorded his first career sack and interception against Cleveland and was named NFC Defensive Player of the Week, the first Bears linebacker to win it since Danny Trevathan in 2018. He finished with 43 tackles in sixteen games and re-signed in March 2026 on a two-year, $7.5 million deal. The 161st pick became a starting NFL linebacker, just not for the team that drafted him.