The Chargers made one of the NFL’s biggest recent free agency mistakes when they signed cornerback J.C. Jackson last year. Jackson ended up playing just seven games for the Chargers, making $38.5 million from the team, and then getting traded to the Patriots for a swap of late-round picks.
Chargers General Manager Tom Telesco felt so bad about the signing of Jackson that at the Chargers’ first defensive backs meeting after the trade, Telesco stood in front of the group and apologized, according to Kris Rhim of ESPN.
Telesco admitted to the rest of the Chargers’ defensive backs that signing Jackson was a mistake, apologized for continuing to give Jackson opportunities, and acknowledged that Jackson didn’t snow the kind of commitment to the team he had hoped for from a player who signed such a lucrative contract.
Telesco called the signing a “swing and a miss.”
Jackson was a Pro Bowler in 2021 with the Patriots before the Chargers signed him in 2022, but he was awful in Los Angeles, and since being traded back to the Patriots this year Jackson hasn’t played as well. Telesco knows he made one of the worst signings ever.