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Ask him if he's better than Rams rookie Donnie Avery, who was the first receiver taken in this year's draft, and he doesn't hesitate with his answer.
"Come on, man," the Eagles' rookie said after Thursday's practice. "No disrespect to him, but I'm putting myself up there as the best. Yeah, I met Donnie. He's a good player and a good athlete. At the [scouting] combine, we were shooting for the fastest 40 time."
And who was faster?
"Come on, man," Jackson said before reciting his lightning-fast time of 4.31.
As soon as Jackson breaks through his confidence barrier, he should be just fine.
Jackson may just have enough talent to match his enormous ego, a pair of traits that seem to go hand in hand so often when you examine the best wide receivers in the league.
Jackson will get a chance to showcase his talent much sooner than anyone anticipated when the Eagles made him the seventh of 10 receivers taken in the second round of the draft. None was selected in the first round.
With Kevin Curtis sidelined for at least the first month of the season by sports hernia surgery and Reggie Brown probably out today because of a strained left hamstring, the 5-foot-10, 175-pound Jackson has been thrust into the Eagles' starting lineup. He's the first Eagles rookie receiver to start on opening day since Calvin Williams in 1990.
Mike Quick, the Eagles' color analyst on radio, played opposite Williams that year and has watched during the preseason as Jackson has raised hope and expectations that he can be the first elite receiver taken by coach Andy Reid in the draft.
"This kid comes from a system where he has been taught to play the position," Quick said in reference to Jackson's degree in receiving from the University of California, where he was going against top college talent in the Pac 10. "He's very polished and he comes into a situation where he is needed.
"Some guys might have come in as talented and as polished, but they go into a team and have to sit behind a Terrell Owens or an Isaac Bruce or Torry Holt. DeSean comes into a situation where he's needed right now to get on the field and play, so I think there's a big difference here."
The burning question is what can the Eagles and their fans expect from Jackson?
Donovan McNabb publicly warns that too much should not be expected from a rookie, but when the two were together on the field in the preseason, the quarterback wasn't shy about throwing the football to Jackson. At the same time, Jackson earned McNabb's confidence by pulling in 16 catches for 189 yards in the preseason. Nobody had more catches than the Eagles' rookie in the preseason.
"I just think he's very natural in everything he does," Quick said. "The way he catches the ball, the way he runs routes . . . he has a knack for where guys are when he catches the ball and then he tries to get the ball down the field. He seems to do things with real ease and I'm talking about things you work hard to try to teach kids to do."
Quick, however, acknowledges that things will be different in the regular season than they were in the preseason for Jackson. The first sign of that came when the Rams put a red No. 10 jersey on a member of their scout-team offense in preparation for the rookie.
"The fear is you get into a situation where you're seeing a lot of things that you've never seen before," Quick said. "Even though you practice them and have these looks in practice, you really can't simulate what's going to happen during the game or the game speed."
Quick, of course, was one of the best receivers in franchise history and still holds the team's single-season record for receiving yards with 1,409. But he openly admits that his rookie season of 1982 was an eye-opening experience.
"You're not ready," he said. "It's a different speed. In college, you play against great talent maybe half the weeks. The other time you're playing against duds – guys that really can't play. At this level, every week it's going to be at a tempo and speed that you would play your bowl games at."
Part of the challenge for a rookie is the way veteran cornerbacks constantly test them.
"That's exactly what is going to happen," Quick said. "Then it's a matter of how he is able to respond to that. They're going to play games with him in terms of what they're doing against him defensively. They're going to play head games with him. They'll hit him at the line of scrimmage or after the play or they'll just talk to him to try to get into his head. That's the battle inside the battle."
Jackson, naturally, thinks he's ready for it.
"I try not to get into it too much with the people on the field," he said. "I try to focus on what I need to do and getting back to the huddle. I worry about my plays and getting open, catching the ball and blocking. But if somebody wants to do something to me, I'm not going to back down. I'm going to go out there and put up a fight because it's a war out there on the field."
So what should be expected of Jackson in his first NFL start and his first NFL season?
"I expect to do great things for myself and with the great team we have here," Jackson said. "The motivation that everybody in this locker room has just keeps me going and wanting to do great things for this team."
Williams, the last rookie in Jackson's opening-day situation, finished his first season with 37 catches for 609 yards and nine touchdowns. His fellow rookie Fred Barnett had 36 catches for 721 yards and eight touchdowns that year. Both would still be considered outstanding rookie seasons.
You just know, however, that Jackson believes he can do even more.
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