A foot injury prevented Chicago Bears safety Mike Brown from playing in Super Bowl XLI against the Indianapolis Colts. Twelve years later, the memory makes Brown cry.

“I still struggle with it,” Brown said. “You play for the (championship), man. You play for the ring. Our team made it, and I couldn’t be out there. It’s the game. It’s the one sport it’s the one game -- one game for a championship. It’s not a series. It’s a game. It’s the biggest game in the world.”

Current Bears safety Eddie Jackson knows how Brown feels.

Jackson missed the last seven games of his final season at Alabama after suffering a broken leg against Texas A&M on Oct. 22, 2016.

Jackson watched from the sideline as the Crimson Tide lost to Clemson 35-31 in the CFP national-championship game. Brown did the same thing -- watched his team lose in the title game as the Indianapolis Colts beat the Bears 29-17 on Feb. 7, 2007.

“I can relate to that 110 percent because something like that kind of happened to me in my college career,” Jackson said during an appearance on the Chicago Tribune podcast “Bear Download.” “My college career ended short. I broke my leg, and I wasn’t able to play in the national-championship game in my last year of college. I had things I wanted to accomplish, so for him, I felt it. … It just shows you football is bigger than what you think. You’re not playing for yourself. But trying to win games, trying to win a championship, it’s really something you fall in love with.”

A championship is what Jackson has set his sights on, and over the past week or so, he had several opportunities to let folks know the Bears “plan on taking this whole thing” in the NFL’s 2019 season

Brown shed his Super Bowl tears as he and Jackson shared the stage during the Bears 100 Celebration on June 8. Although Jackson has played only two NFL seasons, he was selected as one of the best 100 players in the franchise's history after earning All-Pro honors in 2018.

As the Bears head into their 100th season, the team held a three-day centennial celebration, which featured a panel of four safeties from the top 100 -- Jackson, Brown, Gary Fencik and Doug Plank. Jackson called the experience “one of the greatest moments of my life.”

Jackson came to the panel well-acquainted with Brown’s career. During his first NFL training camp, Jackson was given a video featuring Brown and instructed by Bears secondary coach Ed Donatell “to watch it as much as possible.”

At the centennial event, Brown said Jackson can do things on the football field that he couldn't.

“It just gives you chills,” Jackson said. “It’s a blessing.”

While the Bears didn’t reach the Super Bowl last season, Jackson still had a flashback to his final college campaign and Brown’s bad experience. Jackson suffered an ankle injury while returning an interception made in the end zone off Green Bay Packers quarterback Aaron Rodgers in the 14th game of 2018. The injury kept him sidelined for the rest of the season, including a 16-15 playoff loss to the Philadelphia Eagles in the “Double Doink Game.”

“Everybody has that memory in their head of seeing that ball bounce off the metal, so that’s just something that we use,” Jackson said of the postseason defeat. “We know we came this close. We’re using that.”

Jackson and the Bears wrapped up their offseason program last week with mandatory minicamp. The team won't be together again until training camp starts in late July. Jackson can hardly wait.

“That first-round game, that’s just fuel to our fire right now,” Jackson said. “We know we came up short, so we’re just ready to get back at it. You can tell. Everybody was here 100 percent for OTAs. Everyone was here. That just shows you that everyone’s on board, and we’re really ready to chase greatness.”

That means the summer break won't be a five-week vacation, Jackson said.

“(Bears defensive coordinator Chuck) Pagano just told us he wants everyone to watch film for an hour a day,” Jackson told reporters on Tuesday. "Just little things like that so when you come back, you just get back rolling again. We’ve still got that taste in our mouth from that first-round playoff game. …

"I go back home, go back home and train with the guys I started with from when I was little and just try to perfect my craft and watch film and see the little things I can tweak and get better at and things like that."

Before leaving Chicago, though, Jackson held a charity softball game on Saturday as a fundraiser for Goodwill and his Remain to Reach Foundation, which seeks to help teenagers who have been jailed.

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Mark Inabinett is a sports reporter for Alabama Media Group. Follow him on Twitter at @AMarkG1.