Playing quarterback at any level is difficult. Throw in the fact that you’re playing quarterback on a team that hasn’t had a winning season since 2000, and still doesn’t have a coach, and things become even tougher.

But, so is the fate of Justin Jackson, a rising junior at Blake High School. Jackson took over the job upon the firing of four-year head coach Harry Hubbard – the transfer of Zain Gilmore followed.

Michael Burns was brought in to try to bring life to a program that has four winnings seasons since 1967 (19 total seasons) – his term was short lived after resigning earlier this week.

“He was a cool coach,” Jackson said of Burns who named Jackson the starter after spring tryouts. “He taught me a lot of stuff playing quarterback.”

The move however upset a lot of players. Burns bumped heads with a number of players. Jackson says many members of the team talked about walking out, leaving the program and the school, entirely.

“We didn’t want to break the team up so we came together and ended up staying,” Jackson explained. “There was just a lot of bad blood and basically someone had to go because we would have never got anything done.”

Jackson doesn’t know who will be the next Yellowjackets head coach. It could be someone from out of town. It could be someone already on the staff. It doesn’t really matter to Jackson.

“My mindset is to just handle my own business,” he said. “I got to get my own stuff done no matter what. We know what we got to do as a team.”

His journey has been, well, different. He didn’t play much football before high school. When he decided to play his freshman year he was supposed to be a linebacker. After working out all spring with the 7on7 squad as a linebacker he was moved inside to play defensive tackle. That didn’t last long either.

“Three games into the season I tore my ACL,” Jackson said. But, his rehab went better than expected. He was ready for spring the following season. “I went back to linebacker, but ended up playing defensive end and offensive tackle in my sophomore year.”

He came into this spring season expecting to have the opportunity to have the ball in his hands, but didn’t expect it every play.

“I was supposed to play tight end,” Jackson said, “but then Zain left and they ended up putting me at quarterback.”

Being that quarterback was a completely foreign position he had, and still has, a lot of work to do. He’s headed to the Big County Preps E7 Skills Training Camp to continue to work on improving.

“I’m just trying to be the best I can be at quarterback,” Jackson said. “I’m trying to go to E7 to learn. I want to see where I need to work and get better.”

Not only is Jackson looking forward to learning, but he says football camps are fun.

“The best part about camps, especially in Hillsborough County, is that you see people that you know from all over in middle school and little league, no matter what school,” Jackson said. “You grew up with these people and now you’re in high school and everyone has the same goal.”

He knows he needs to work on all aspects of his game. His footwork, arm strength, accuracy – he knows he needs to work on his complete craft. But his personal skills are not the be-all-end-all.

“The most important thing to me is chemistry with my wide receivers,” he said. He’ll work on that during 7on7 and ‘stuff like that.’

“I’m also going to be training with a lot of different coaches working on my speed and arm strength and a bunch of different things to be a dominant player.”