DeSean & Byron Jackson: The Family Story Behind 'Go Deep' | NFL, Pressure & Legacy

SPEAKER_1 (0:00)

Fourth quarter, it's just a time bomb waiting to erupt. Chick, chick, chick.

Byron Jackson (0:13)

Growing up, football was everything, and our father's words was like gospel.

Bill Jackson (0:17)

It's America's game.

Byron Jackson (0:18)

He believed they would be our path to wealth and freedom. But I never loved the game like they did.

Bill Jackson (0:25)

Byron let me down, but the Sean, Seth, the Sean got that fire.

Byron Jackson (0:34)

I wanted to reconnect with my father, so I started filming every practice, get up, D, every game, represent Long Beach Poly. I wanted to make a movie of our lives on and off the field.

SPEAKER_4 (1:10)

Let's go.

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Richard Taite (1:26)

Today, we're talking about a new Prime Video documentary called Go Deep, The DeSean Jackson Story. If you know football, you know DeSean Jackson. He was one of the most electric receivers of his generation, spanning 15-year career in the NFL. He was a three-time Pro Bowl wide receiver for the Philadelphia Eagles, and also won a Super Bowl with the LA Rams. But this film isn't just about football. It's built from decades of home video shot by DeSean's older brother, Byron Jackson, who had a camera on his family long before anybody knew where DeSean's career was going. What you get is a much more complicated story about their father, Bill, ambition, pressure, family success, some painful chapters, and what happens when one person keeps the camera rolling through all of it. Byron, thank you for joining me today. I've been talking a lot of sh-t about my father for years.

And I've been doing it publicly. And so publicly, I'm going to undo it today, because I was wrong. And after I saw this documentary, I knew how wrong I was. And let me tell you why.

Hard times create strong men. Strong men create good times. Good times create weak men. And weak men create hard times.

My dad did it right.

And your dad did it right, too. So if anybody thinks I'm going to start throwing shade at your old man, they're wrong.

Dead wrong. That guy did it right. He built it out. Two kids that are thriving in the world. And that's a father's job. To make certain that his kids are okay in the world when they're gone. That's it. Job number one. Okay. We may not like the path that we took, but we don't get to argue with the results. And then we don't get to go back and say, oh, it should have been different. It could have been, that's ridiculous. I don't even have any ear for it. So thank you so much, man, for creating that beautiful documentary, Go Deep, right?

Byron Jackson (3:59)

Go Deep, yes.

Richard Taite (4:00)

It was the most beautiful documentary I've ever seen. Amazing. All right, let's get right into it.

All right, my man, let's go.

Byron Jackson (4:09)

I appreciate that commentary on fathers because our father didn't do it right, but by all means, and he had four boys by maybe three different women, but he made sure we all stay connected and it was brothers no matter what.

Richard Taite (4:27)

The love you have for your brother and that your brother has for you, if I think about it too long, I'll just fall apart because my brother passed away.

Byron Jackson (4:38)

Sorry to hear that.

Richard Taite (4:39)

Yeah, very, very lucky man. You started filming your family long before there was an NFL career or documentary.

What were you trying to capture at the beginning?

Byron Jackson (4:53)

I think I had just finished my career and I had just got into television and I looked around and I had not a lot of images of when I played.

Being in television, I'm like, I wish somebody would have filmed me. I was like, let me go film my brother and just document all of the, let me just document his journey, not knowing where it was going to originally go, but after play after play, he just kept making plays. I was like, man, I have something. And then once I felt I have something, I had something after he played junior. I mean, not junior, but Pop Warner. I worked at Fox Sports, so I started putting together a highlight tape. And one of my buddies at Fox was a producer.

And since he was a producer, he saw what I was editing. He's like, man, that's your brother. And I said, yeah, I've been telling you about my brother for ever. And he came out to a game. He said, yeah, this is a documentary. So my buddy from Fox, he started filming with me. So we just kind of tag-teamed the whole DeSean's whole little life from Pop Warner to high school. And not only were we tag-teaming filming him, but I had just got, you know, cut from NFL team twice. So I felt like I had all the knowledge to give him at a young age. So I was filming him, training him. My other buddy, Travis Clark, he was filming him and throwing passes to him. When he was training on throwing passes, I would grab the camera and film DeSean and Tika's routes and stuff like that. And it just went off the field. My dad was on the sideline, kind of organizing all of my buddies to kind of build this team Jackson approach around DeSean. And it was just kind of like a circus. We just started filming and training. And my dad was so hilarious and I couldn't stop filming him because he would have us all cracking up, whether he was cracking a whip on us training DeSean, he was cracking a whip on DeSean, he was cracking a whip on people that came around and saw what we were doing and didn't agree, he would cuss them out and say, if you don't, if you're not with this plan, get out of here.