Posted by Darren Urban on August 13, 2015 – 8:34 am

Up until this point Edwin Jackson has been most recognizable because of a) his hair or b) the fact he now wears the No. 58 that belonged to Daryl Washington. But inside the team, Jackson is the exuberant inside linebacker with the nickname “Pound Cake.” Coach Bruce Arians certainly has no issue putting nicknames out for the world to know, and he mentioned the other day that Jackson — one of the undrafted rookies trying to make the team at a thin position — is nicknamed Pound Cake. He deferred on saying why. Jackson was more than willing to offer the answer.

Seems that before the draft, the Cardinals brought the 6-foot, 230-pound Jackson in for an official visit. It isn’t unusual that the Cards bring in guys who might be very late-or-not-at-all draft picks to visit, perhaps setting up for an undrafted rookie deal down the road. The problem? Jackson, citing how crowded and crazy it can get at Atlanta’s Hartsfield-Jackson Airport, missed his flight. For a guy just trying to find a job in the NFL, it wasn’t an ideal first impression.

“I just knew I messed up somebody’s schedule,” Jackson said.

But he had a plan. “My Mom, she cooks the best pound cakes in the world,” Jackson said. When Jackson got to Arizona, coaches got on his case, asking how he could possibly miss his flight. Jackson was ready. “I apologize,” he told them, “but I didn’t come empty-handed.” The skeptical coaches asked “What do you got?” They told him, jokingly, he’d owe them $50 if it wasn’t good enough.

“I pulled out these pound cakes, best pound cakes from Georgia, homemade from scratch,” Jackson said. “I didn’t hear about missing that flight, not one bit.”

Jackson said he thinks special teams coach Amos Jones was the first to start calling him Pound Cake — “He knows about that Southern cooking,” Jackson said — and the nickname rolled through the coaches, his teammates and the training staff. Now it’s not going away.

“It just stuck,” Jackson said. “As a rookie, they don’t really know your name. But they did not forget those pound cakes.”

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