2:50pm: Jackson tore his ACL, a source tells Jordan Raanan of NJ.com, meaning that Jackson is likely to miss the 2015 season.
8:51am: The Giants‘ secondary, already ravaged by injury, suffered another major blow in last night’s preseason victory over Jacksonville. In addition to losing rookie safety Justin Currie for the season, Jordan Raanan of NJ.com writes that second-year safety Bennett Jackson sustained a knee injury on a defensive play in the fourth quarter. Raanan reports that Jackson, who enjoyed an excellent training camp and who appeared poised to land a starting role, left the team locker room limping badly and with his right knee in a brace. The extent of Jackson’s injury is unclear at this time, and he will get an MRI today, but as Raanan tweeted last night, there are concerns that it could be serious.
Of course, given the state of the Giants’ secondary–by the time the game ended, six of the nine safeties on the roster were unavailable due to injury–it is fair to wonder why Jackson was even on the field in the fourth quarter, having played 56 snaps already. At the moment, Brandon Meriweather, Jeromy Miles, and Justin Halley, all of whom have been signed in the past five weeks, are the only safeties left standing. Dan Graziano of ESPN.com tweets that Nat Berhe is expected to return to practice this week, but that will do little to assuage the team’s concerns at safety.
Unfortunately for the Giants, there are just not a ton of outside options to fortify the position, which is well-illustrated by a tweet from Aaron Wilson of The Houston Chronicle this morning. Wilson notes that former Rutgers safety Jeremy Deering, who signed with New England as an undrafted free agent last year and who will be auditioning with the Eagles today, will next visit the Colts and Jets if he is not signed by Philadelphia. As PFR’s Ben Levine wrote yesterday, at least six teams are currently interested in Deering, which bespeaks the lack of quality safety options available at this point in the year. Graziano tweeted that Big Blue will likely “poke around” the free agent market again this week–it is unknown whether the Giants have interest in Deering–but it’s not as if the the team expects to find the answer to its prayers in the process. As head coach Tom Coughlin said of the mounting injuries, “It’s amazing with the way that’s going. It’s just hard to even comment on.”
We will pass along an update on Jackson’s injury as soon as it becomes available.