New Vikings cornerback Khyree Jackson is not an ordinary rookie.
Jackson, drafted in the fourth round (108th overall) on Saturday, walks into the NFL as “one of the biggest [cornerbacks] in the league right now,” said Ryan Grigson, the Vikings’ senior vice president of player personnel. He was the tallest among 67 defensive backs at this year’s combine, listed at 6-foot-3¾, and his 33-inch arms were also near the top of the class.
Jackson will also be 25 years old before he plays an NFL regular-season game.
His seven-year journey to the NFL since graduating from Wise High School in 2017 didn’t seem likely from the deli counter at a Harris Teeter grocery store near his hometown of Upper Marlboro, Md.
That’s where Jackson worked when he didn’t play football in 2017 or 2018. He starred as a receiver for a state title-winning high school, but Jackson didn’t have the grades for Division I recruitment. He enrolled at Arizona Western College in Yuma, Ariz., but before the season, he left the team and went back to live at home.
“At one point I wasn’t really thinking about football much,” Jackson said Saturday. “I had just won employee of the month at a grocery store, so I really wasn’t thinking much about it, honestly. I told my mom at one point in time, I guess I’m about to be working at a grocery store. … For a bit of a second, football got a little bit foggy.”
Jackson said he stayed close to football because he had friends playing at D-I programs. He even avoided those friends and others when he initially moved home to Maryland in the fall of 2017, pretending to still be in school in Arizona.
“I stayed in my house for six straight months, and nobody knew,” Jackson said. “It was kind of like eating away at me. And I finally eventually just told my friends. That was like — that moment really told me, like, if I was embarrassed to even tell them, I might want to get up and try to do it again instead of sitting here sulking.”