Hall Voters Have Ignored Harold Jackson's Productivity

By John Turney 

"He may be small, but he can fly."

That's what Eagles' player-coach Irv Cross said in 1969 about Harold Jackson when then-Eagles' head coach Jerry Williams considered trading for the diminutive but fast wide receiver ... and Cross would have known. He was with the Rams the previous year and had to cover Jackson in practice. 

So, based largely on his evaluation, the Eagles pulled the trigger and traded for Jackson.

They weren't sorry.

The 5-foot-10, 175-pounder delivered for them -- big time. In fact, Jackson delivered big in nearly every stop of his 16-year NFL career. His production was often unmatched in a single season ... or over multiple seasons.

Yet, when it comes to the Pro Football Hall of Fame, that career has been ignored -- also, big time. He only reached the nomination phase, was never a finalist and appeared on the preliminary ballot just three times.

Harold Jackson deserves better, and I'll tell you why: When you examine his numbers, he was one of the top receivers of his era.

Consider that Jackson achieved the receiving triple crown, topping all others in receptions, receiving yards and touchdowns. That was a huge deal when the Rams' Cooper Kupp did it in 2021 because it's so uncommon to achieve. But Jackson didn't do it in a single season.

He did it for the entire decade of the 1970s. From 1970-79, no one caught more passes ... for more yards ... and more touchdowns than Harold Jackson.

But that's not all. 

Let's take it further. 

Expand the seasons from 1970-79 to 1969-81 -- the 13 years Jackson was a starter -- and you have the same results. Jackson was No. 1 in all three categories, and, yes, that's a big deal. Going back to when the NFL first kept statistics, only nine players in pro football history led all three categories for a 13-year span. 

The other eight? Try Don Hutson, Jerry Rice, Steve Largent, Larry Fitzgerald, Don Maynard and Marvin Harrison. Then add Fred Biletnikoff and Billy Howton, who each led in catches and yards but tied for the lead in TD receptions.

Randy Moss never did it. Nor did Terrell Owens. Throw in Hall-of-Famers Raymond Berry, Charlie Joiner, Art Monk, Andre Johnson, Isaac Bruce or anyone else with a Gold Jacket not listed above, and they didn't do it, either.

It's rarefied air. 

Now, consider that Jackson did it for two teams -- the 1973-77 Los Angeles Rams and 1978-81 New England Patriots -- and the accomplishment becomes even more remarkable. In Jackson's five years in L.A., "Ground Chuck" Knox was the most run-heavy coach in the NFL. Not Chuck Noll nor Don Shula. Chuck Knox. And when Jackson was in New England, only two teams had a higher run-pass ratio than the Patriots.

Imagine if he played longer in more balanced offenses. 

Actually, he did in the early 1970s with the Eagles, but their quarterbacks were names like Pete Liske, Rick Arrington and John Reeves. Not exactly Pro Bowl passers. Nevertheless, Jackson racked up the numbers, making him the king of receivers in the so-called "dead-ball" era of pro football. 

Yet, in light of all that, when Jackson was a modern-era candidate for the Pro Football Hall, he never had traction ... and that continues now that he's a senior candidate.

Why? Perhaps because he moved around so much he never had the support of his hometown presenters. Or maybe it's because he played on a lot of teams that never went to a Super Bowl. 

It's hard to know. But that should change. Granted, Jackson moved around a lot, but he was a player with value because -- as Cross put it -- "he could fly."

"HAROLD JACKSON STATE"

The Rams grabbed Jackson out of Jackson State, an HBCU in Mississippi where he dominated the competition so completely that one paper suggested it change its name to "Harold Jackson State." That was his junior season when Jackson scored three times in one game  -- once with a touchdown catch and two others by punt and kickoff returns. It was also the season he set a touchdown reception record that stood until 1998.

Small wonder, then, that Jackson's teammates called him "Ghost. He was so fast that you couldn't see him run by you. In fact, he ran by so many defenders that he was named all-conference twice and was chosen to the Black All-American team published by the Pittsburgh Courier.

Injured as a senior, he fell to the 12th round of the 1968 NFL draft where the Rams finally grabbed him and immediately discovered he was the fastest man on the team. But even though nobody could cover him in practice, he spent most of his rookie season on the taxi squad.

"Deacon Jones decided to cover me," Jackson said after defensive backs gave up. "He got right up over my head. So I came off the line of scrimmage and put a move on him, and he didn't put a hand on me. I went around him. He took off his headgear and threw it at me."

Jackson was set up to replace the retired Bernie Casey as the Rams' flanker in 1969, but that didn't happen. Legend has it that the second-fastest Ram, Wendell Tucker, edged Jackson in a head-to-head race where the winner would stay in L.A. and the loser goes on the market. Tucker was fast, but Jackson usually was faster.

But not on that day.

Tucker was also 10-15 pounds heavier and that made a difference to coach George Allen. When the Eagles' Williams asked Cross why the Rams would be willing to part with Jackson, Cross was direct.

"George Allen likes his receivers 6-3 and 215 pounds," he said. "But trust me, he can fly."

So, he was traded to Philadelphia where he started and where he excelled. 

In his time there, the team wasn't much good, but Jackson was. From 1969-72, only one NFL player caught more passes, and only two amassed more receiving yards. Jackson went to the 1969 and 1972 Pro Bowls and in 1972 was second-team All-Pro -- on an 2-11-1 team. He also led the NFL in receiving yards in 1969 and was first in receptions and receiving yards three years later.

Then he got a break. He was traded back to the Rams in 1973 for quarterback Roman Gabriel in one of the great robberies in NFL history.

The Eagles needed a quality quarterback. The Rams didn't. They'd just acquired John Hadl from the Chargers. But they wanted Jackson. In fact, they insisted he be included in any deal ... along with a quality fullback and draft picks ... and they got their way. The Eagles traded Jackson, running back Tony Baker, a first-round draft pick in the 1974 draft (John Cappelletti) and a first (Dennis Harrah) and third-rounder (Geoff Reece) in 1975 for Gabriel.

Result: In 1973, Jackson scored a league-leading and career-best 13 touchdowns, including four in an early game vs. Dallas, and was named first-team All-Pro. He also averaged 21.9 yards on his 40 receptions, which was second in the league.

"He had great body control," Hadl said, "and the feet of the boxer."

He also had the trust of his quarterback.

"John and I," Jackson told therams.com, "we had a good year."

Jackson went to three Pro Bowls while with the Rams, moving his career total to five, but it wasn't as easy as it might seem. The Rams began the playoffs in each of those years with a different quarterback. Yet Jackson caught 21 passes for 505 yards, a stellar 24.0 yards per catch and four touchdowns in eight post-season games.

Still after five stellar seasons, he was shipped to New England in 1978. 

With the loss of wide receiver Darryl Stingley, paralyzed by a hit from the Raiders' Jack Tatum, the Patriots needed a replacement. So they approached the Rams to inquire about Jackson and, lo and behold, pried him away. It seems that Rams' GM Don Klosterman thought a cluster of good young receivers made Jackson expendable, but they weren't as good as he believed. And Jackson? He outperformed expectations with the Patriots.

Big time.

Playing flanker for the first time since his rookie season, he gave the Patriots a second deep threat to match with their young speedster, Stanley Morgan. It made Jackson a complementary receiver for the first time in his career -- he'd always been the proverbial No. 1 -- and he flourished. All he did in his four years with New England was produce the NFL's third-highest yards-per-catch average, behind Morgan and another young speedster -- the New York Jets' Wesley Walker. 

Except those two were in their early 20s. Jackson was a decade older.

"I GUESS THEY ARE BELIEVERS NOW"

In 1979, Jackson caught 45 passes for 1,013 yards, with a 22.5 yards-per-catch average that trailed only Morgan. His 21.1 yards per reception one year later was again second in the NFL ... and again to Morgan.

The old man could still fly.

After the 1981 season, however, he couldn't. Not anymore. He left New England, signed with the Chargers and, after failing to make the team, joined the Vikings for a playoff run late in the season. His career ended a year later in Seattle as a backup.

But look what he'd done. When Jackson retired, no wide receiver played more than his 16 seasons, and none played more than his 208 games. Plus, he finished second all-time in receiving yards, was seventh in receptions and tied for ninth in touchdown catches.  He also was 15th in yards per catch among receivers with 300 or more receptions.

When he was eligible in 1989 for the Hall of Fame, he was still top five in yards, top 10 in touchdown catches, 11th in receptions and 20th in yards per catch.

But dig a little deeper, and you'll find more. Jackson's career ended with "black ink" in four categories -- a reference to the bold ink used by sports encyclopedias to denote league leadership. He was also top 10 in the major categories 20 times -- sometimes referred to as "grey ink" by statisticians. I mention that because when you take all the Hall-of-Fame wide receivers and average their "black" and "grey ink" totals, the result is four and 20, respectively.

Or, exactly Jackson's total.

Even so, Pro Football Hall-of-Fame voters haven't seemed to notice as others have. Jackson is a member of the Jackson State University Hall of Fame, the Southwestern Athletic Conference Hall of Fame and the Black College Football Hall of Fame. Additionally, his combined pro and collegiate career landed him in the City of Hattiesburg Hall of Fame and Mississippi Sports Hall of Fame.

But Canton? Crickets.

In fairness, much of the research detailing what Jackson did for a 10 or 13-year span wasn't available in the late 1980s, 1990s and early 2000s. It would have been done by hand, and,  apparently, it wasn't. But now Pro Football Reference's search engine makes it easier to find such statistics, which should make it easier for the Hall's seniors' committee to take a closer look at players who fell through the cracks.

Players like Harold Jackson.

"A lot of people told me I would never make it in this game," he said near the end of his career. "Well, I guess they are believers now."

Tell that to Canton.