Jordan
Jackson.
Jordan
Jackson.
Air Force· 6'5"· 294 lb
Jackson is a 6-foot-4, 294-pound interior lineman with 33 3/4-inch arms and a nearly 6-foot-10 wingspan, and the length is what he wins with. He shoots his hands first, keeps blockers off his frame and works down the line extended, which is why he produced 12.5 tackles for loss in each of his two best seasons.
He is not an explosive first-step athlete — a 1.76 ten-yard split and a 30.5-inch vertical put him in the bottom half of interior linemen — and he wins late rather than early, with a long-arm and a rip once the blocker's hands land wide. Air Force asked him to two-gap against option teams and he held up, but he is a stack-and-shed defender more than a penetrator, and anchoring against double teams is where his tape thins out.
A four-man front that lets him play three-technique or 4i on early downs and slides him inside on passing downs to use his length.
Year 1: practice-squad developmental lineman. Ceiling: 350-snap rotational interior defender on a deep front.
A one-gap penetrating front that asks him to beat NFL guards off the snap with quickness he does not have.
His length plays best when the scheme lets him read rather than shoot.
2022 NFL Draft: DT Jordan Jackson, Air Force — Saints Interview
His first conversation after being drafted 194th overall.
Jordan Jackson Interview — Air Force Falcons
The academy's own interview during his final Falcons season.
New Orleans Saints select Jordan Jackson of Air Force
Draft-day breakdown of the pick and his college tape.
Jackson grew up in Jacksonville and played at Bolles for Corky Rogers, earning all-state honorable mention as a senior with a two-star recruiting grade. He went to the academy prep school, then enrolled at the academy in 2017 and played eleven games as a freshman with seven tackles.
He became a full-time starter immediately after that. As a sophomore in 2018 he started all twelve games with 54 tackles, a team-best 12.5 tackles for loss and 4.5 sacks, and became the first defensive lineman and first sophomore since 2014 to make second-team All-Mountain West. In 2019 he started twelve of thirteen games on an 11-2 bowl-winning team, with 38 tackles, 3.5 sacks, a blocked extra point at Colorado and honorable-mention all-conference honors.
Then the pandemic took a year. Jackson was one of roughly 35 Falcons who took an administrative turnback in 2020; he had shoulder surgery, went home and drove for Uber Eats while his team played a shortened season. He came back for 2021 and started all thirteen games with 41 tackles, 12.5 tackles for loss and a career-high 7.5 sacks, leaving as the program's No. 2 all-time in sack yardage. That is 49 games, 37 starts, 15.5 sacks — and a service commitment teams had to weigh, since academy graduates need an approved deferral to play.
- 01
Length
33 3/4-inch arms and a 6-foot-9 1/2 wingspan let him lock out blockers and keep his chest clean in the run game.
- 02
Disruption at the line
29.5 career tackles for loss, including 12.5 in both 2018 and 2021, on a defense that rarely blitzed him.
- 03
Sack production
15.5 career sacks and second in Air Force history in sack yardage, a rare number for an academy interior lineman.
- 04
Option discipline
four years of two-gapping triple-option looks in Mountain West practice taught him to play with squared shoulders.
- 05
Character and durability
a four-year starter, academy graduate and captain-type who missed only the 2020 turnback year.
- 01
First-step quickness
a 1.76 ten-yard split and 4.96 forty mean he loses the snap to NFL guards and has to win with technique.
- 02
Lower-body explosiveness
a 30.5-inch vertical and 9-foot-4 broad jump show a limited power base when he has to move a man.
- 03
Anchor at 294 pounds
heavy double teams walk him back, and he is not a two-down nose against a gap-scheme running game.
- 04
Age and lost time
he turned 24 in his rookie year and had not played competitive football in eighteen months before 2021.
| Yr | Team | G | Tkl | Sk | Int | PD | FF |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2017 | Air Force | 11 | 7 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| 2018 | Air Force | 12 | 54 | 4.5 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| 2019 | Air Force | 13 | 38 | 3.5 | 0 | 2 | 1 |
| 2021 | Air Force | 13 | 41 | 7.5 | 0 | 1 | 1 |
| Career | — | 49 | 140 | 15.5 | 0 | 6 | 2 |
The 2021 line comes from his cfbstats player page; 2017, 2018 and 2019 come from the official Air Force biography, since cfbstats has no player pages for Air Force before 2020. The four seasons sum exactly to the career line the Denver Broncos publish: 49 games, 37 starts, 140 tackles, 29.5 tackles for loss, 15.5 sacks and two forced fumbles. There is no 2020 season at all — Jackson took an administrative turnback from the academy that fall and had shoulder surgery, so no phantom row is listed. Passes defended are left empty for 2017 and 2018 because the official bio narrates individual breakups without publishing a season total; the career figure of six is the Broncos' number.
A dash means the figure is not published by a source we trust — never a zero we invented.
Late-round defensive lineman who lives on the roster bubble and delivers useful depth snaps.
Long interior lineman who carves out a decade of rotational work with occasional production spikes.
Interior lineman whose lack of explosiveness limits him to spot duty before he fades out.
Everything above is the pre-draft evaluation. This section is what actually happened — updated year over year.
New Orleans drafted him at 194 and cut him at the end of camp on August 30, 2022, keeping him on the practice squad instead. He never played a snap for the Saints. Denver signed him to a futures deal in January 2023 — general manager George Paton later said he had wanted Jackson in the 2022 draft — and he spent that year on the practice squad too, waived at the cutdown and re-signed the next day.
The patience paid. Jackson made the initial 53-man roster in 2024 and played all seventeen games as a rotational interior lineman, recording seventeen tackles, a sack and a forced fumble, plus three tackles in two postseason games. A quieter 2025 brought five appearances and seven tackles. Denver tendered him as an exclusive-rights free agent in March 2025 and again in March 2026, which is the league's way of saying a player is worth keeping at minimum cost. Twenty-two games and 24 tackles is not stardom, but a sixth-round academy lineman still on an NFL roster in year five has beaten his draft slot.