Tom Brady ‘struck a nerve’ with Carolina Panthers star CB. It’s easy to see why
It was a million degrees and muggy, and the first-team defense was lumbering off to the sideline for a much-deserved break.
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And then there was Mike Jackson.
The ex-Seahawks cornerback the Carolina Panthers traded “a stale bag of chips” for in 2024 — and the defensive back whose numbers made two-time Pro Bowler Jaycee Horn advocate for him to make an All-Pro team last year — simply never stopped moving during Wednesday’s mandatory minicamp session just outside of Bank of America Stadium.
He rarely ever does stand still, in fact. If he’s on the field, he’s pushing himself. If he’s off, he’s bobbing his head to the hip-hop blasting during 11-on-11 scrimmages, or asking what defensive assistant coach Jonathan Cooley is seeing, or jawing with the first-team offense.
You wonder aloud if this is all new — if this is a ramp-up to the massive 2026 season ahead of him. Jackson got a two-year contract at the conclusion of 2024 because of how well he played then. Now, at 29 years old, playing at the peak of his game, a question lingers:
Is he out to prove he deserves to be paid like a top cornerback in the league?
Should he already be paid as such?
“To be honest, I’m not really even thinking about it,” Jackson told The Charlotte Observer on Wednesday, after the second day of three mandatory minicamp practice sessions. “Third-and-3, first game, it’s all coming regardless. No matter if I’m getting paid league minimum, or $100 million per year. So for me, it’s just about focusing on this.
“The time when I’ve focused on, ‘Dang, I should get this,’ and, ‘This guy getting that,’ I never played well. So for me, it’s kind of like, go play football.”
You might wonder, for a moment, if he withheld some honesty there. After all, Jackson finished the 2025 season splendidly. His stats: 68 tackles, four interceptions and one forced fumble. He finished the regular season with a league-leading 19 passes defended. One of those picks was off MVP Matt Stafford, by the way, which Jackson took back to the Panthers’ end zone.
According to Pro Football Focus, he finished the year as the third-highest-rated cornerback — generating the second-highest PFF coverage grade among CBs (85.8) and in the 90th percentile in nearly all of PFF’s cornerback metrics.
Moreover, it’s not like Jackson doesn’t think about money, either. After his fourth and final interception last season, at home against Seattle, his teammates gathered around him and celebrated the fact that Jackson had achieved a $500,000 incentive on his contract. He loved getting an extra $1 million at the conclusion of 2024 as a result of the NFL’s Performance Based Pay Program. He purchased land in his hometown of Birmingham before arriving in Charlotte in 2024 with plans of developing it into a subdivision one day; that is to say he isn’t coy about the importance of figuring out life — and career — after football.
But something about the fact that he wasn’t focused on next year’s deal — how much it will be, if it comes at all — still rang true Wednesday.
Just listen.
“Everybody puts an emphasis on a contract year, like, ‘Oh, I gotta go ball,’” Jackson said. “For me, every year is a contract year. Every year you gotta push your chips to the middle of the table and go all in. Because otherwise, in my mind, I don’t have the beauty of, ‘OK, I can chill this year and then come back next year.’
“I’ve been on practice squad. That’s just the practice squad lifestyle.”
To understand what Jackson means by “practice squad lifestyle,” you can look at his past.
Jackson was drafted in the fifth round out of the University of Miami by the Dallas Cowboys but didn’t make the team. He played one game for Detroit that season, one in New England the next, two in Seattle in 2021 — but spent most of those years, on those teams, dwelling on the practice squad, waiting for his chance, before finally getting some time with Seattle in 2023 and breaking out for Carolina in 2024.
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Another way you can understand Jackson’s “practice squad lifestyle” mentality?
Just look at his X feed.
The backstory: A few weeks ago, Las Vegas Raiders minority co-owner and FOX analyst and all-time great quarterback Tom Brady went on a talk show and said a lot of guys on practice squads “don’t want to be elevated” to the 53-man active roster. Today, practice squad players with three-plus years of experience make $18,000 to $22,000 a week.
In full:
“They’re very happy living this life where they could tell their family and friends (they play for an NFL team) — which I have no problem with that,” Brady said. “You would just assume, though, that if you’re on the practice squad, you’d want to be at the top. But the reality is a lot of guys don’t want the pressure of dealing with the top.”
Jackson was one of hundreds of people who disagreed with such a take. And he was one of a few dozen players to respond to it online, saying, in part: “How can somebody who ain’t never been on p-squad talk about it?”
Jackson expounded to The Observer as to why Brady’s comments bothered him so much.
“Because I was on practice squad!” Jackson said. “He never spent a day on practice squad. I went and Googled just to make sure.”
He laughed.
“For you to sit there and say, ‘Well, all practice squad guys, they don’t want the pressure.’ Nah,” Jackson continued. “You’re giving us a bad name when you weren’t us. That’s like me saying that winning a Super Bowl doesn’t change your life. I can’t say that; I’ve never won a Super Bowl! So that struck a nerve.”
Jackson continued to discuss the discomforting elements of being a practice squad player — about how practice squad players often don’t get paid in the offseason, and that they can be gone if they get injured. He added that practice squad players are often the hungriest in the game.
It’s exactly why Jackson never seems to stop moving. Why he’s not getting distracted by “contract year” narratives.
It all comes back to the practice squad lifestyle he loves — the one he lives today.
“(Brady’s comment) kind of brought it out of me,” Jackson said. “I’m naturally a quiet guy. Like, off the field, I’m quiet. If I don’t really know you, I don’t really talk. But on the field, this is my world. This is my playground. So in my mind, I’m the baddest of the baddest out here. You know how they say, ‘Somebody’s always tougher than you. Stronger than you.’
“In my mind, I’m the toughest. Regardless. You’re going to have to show me that you’re tougher than me every single play. I can get hit in the mouth. But can you get hit in the mouth? That’s just my mentality.”
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This story was originally published June 11, 2026 at 6:00 AM.
