Safety Tanard Jackson was signed by the Redskins in April of 2012, but never played a game with the team because he was suspeded for a year after violating the NFL’s substance-abuse policy.
Jackson will be eligible for reinstatement just before the start of the regular season and the Redskins will get a roster exemption of a few weeks to decide whether or not to put Jackson on the roster. That decision will obviously have much to do with how Jackson looks once he’s allowed to resume practicing with the team and with what the team’s other safeties do in training camp and the preseason, but defensive coordinator Jim Haslett certainly sounds like he’s eager to get the chance to make that decision.
“Obviously if we got Tanard back, you know that’s another bonus because he’s a heck of a football player. I don’t know where that stands with the NFL, but we’d welcome [him] back with open arms,” Haslett said, via Rich Tandler of CSNWashington.com.
The best case for the Redskins would be for Jackson to truly be a bonus to the secondary. That would mean Brandon Meriweather is healthy and rookies Phillip Thomas and Bacarri Rambo are ready to take on regular season roles, among other questions to be answered at training camp. That would make it incumbent on Jackson to force his way onto the roster, a much better scenario than the Redskins needing to count on a player a strike away from a lifetime ban for a significant place on their defense.