3 Years After Earning Super Bowl Ring, DeSean Jackson Still Feels ‘Bittersweet’ About Rams’ Win

DeSean Jackson had a remarkable career, ending with 3x Pro Bowls and a coveted Super Bowl ring. Not to forget that he bagged  Pro Bowl honors at two positions— kick returner and wide receiver. And honestly, his dedication to the sport showed. His former team member, Darius Slay, did not shy away from praising the 5’11, 170-pound former WR. “He changed the game; He really was the first true 160-pound receiver — a super threat.” Naturally, that’s something to be proud of. A Lombardi trophy is what the league aspires. But not for the coveted wide receiver. Three years down the line, after clinching the Super Bowl ring, Jackson has a mixed set of emotions towards the cup. A victory that ended up with a bittersweet feeling.

Jackson had a decent season with the Los Angeles Rams, earning 221 yards on eight receptions. Most of which were recorded during the Rams’ victory over the Tampa Bay Buccaneers in September 2021. And soon after that, he parted ways with the Rams in November and joined the Las Vegas Raiders. And even though Jackson did not play in the Super Bowl game with the Rams, he spent the majority of the 2021 season with them, who considered him a part of their team’s journey to the championship.

“It’s a bittersweet situation,” DeSean Jackson put across in a conversation with LA Legends on Friday. “I feel like no. My brother be trying to get me to wear it.  I’m show you are my mind playing the game. You know, I’m saying like I was a part of the process. I went, you know, all season, workouts, training camp. Should we beat the defending champions the year before, which was Tampa Bay, Buccaneers, the game I played, and I went crazy on them, so I made a big play, 75 75-yard touchdown that game, and helped win that game. But I don’t know it’s really like, and I feel like this too, like, and then my career goes to defining a ring.”

In the NFL, there’s no tough mandate on bestowing a Super Bowl ring to a player who departs mid-season or so. It is mostly on the owner’s decision who gets it. And the circuit is pretty generous in that aspect. The team’s practice squad usually gets them, and so do the players who played a game or two with the roster and moved to another team. Up to the point that, if the owner feels pretty generous, the employees, such as the team managers, might get to wear it as well. And since Jackson had contributed significantly to the roster. The Rams decided to offer him the ring as well.

Jackson further spoke about beating Jerry Rice and Randy Moss in his record. “You know, I’m saying, like, I feel like my numbers and everything I did, I feel like, hopefully, one day I can’t get into the Hall of Fame. I feel like, you know, records I got beating Jerry Rice, Randy Moss, like, you know, some of the records I got is crazy. And I never even thought, you know, a lot of actually would happen. So, I mean, like, like, Bro stuff. Like, I’m a one-on-one, you know, I’m gonna go down the history.”

And with all the records and players he beat, he is not shy to put forward his case as a Hall of Fame candidate. “That was a goal for me. It was a vision. It was a dream,” Jackson said. “I definitely feel like my body of work speaks for itself. (I’m) breaking records and creating records. There are records that wasn’t even heard of that I was putting in the record books,” he said to CBS Sports.

After parting ways with the Rams, he played for the Las Vegas Raiders and the Baltimore Ravens. He then wrapped up his NFL career in December 2023. But that wasn’t the end of his love for the sport. He went on to make his coaching debut at Delaware State.

DeSean Jackson’s Delaware State receives $20 million bond aimed at infrastructure development

After wrapping up a 15-year NFL career in 2023, he moved to Collegiate football. In December last year, DeSean Jackson announced his CFB coaching debut at Delaware State. All thanks to celebrated icon Deion Sanders, who opened the doors for former NFL players to enter college football head coaching roles in HBCUs, as Jackson puts it. But the task ahead is not easy. But just developing the O-line is not the only task DeSean Jackson is grappling with. Poor infrastructure proves to be another hurdle. Even after his arrival in Dover, DeSean had expressed his concerns regarding the lack of infrastructure the Hornets had in their backyard. “It’s kind of shaming to be at a Division I school, and I can’t brag about our facilities,” he told lawmakers at a capital budget hearing in April.

But, much to his relief, just a couple of months down the line, Jackson & Co. received good news when the state approved $20 million bond for the Athletics Transformation Project at DSU. The roster is thrilled with DeSean putting his excitement across with, “Coming from a big school like Cal and seeing them transform over the years [through upgrades], I think it’s really gonna help with recruiting.”

Even after securing a huge financial chunk, Jackson looks across a challenge. After head coach Lee Hull’s departure, developing the O-line, which ended up with 1-11 last season, is no walk in the park. And attracting fresh talent from the high school circuit is another area in which the program presently suffers. But  Jackson is determined to follow in the footsteps of Prime Coach, who led Jackson State from 4-8 to a SWAC champion and further boosted the Buffaloes’ winning streak, transforming a poor 1-11 to 9-4 season, all within four years. With less than 50 days from the onset of the 2025 season, let’s see how the Hornets fare in the playoffs.