With apologies to his teammates, cornerback Vestee Jackson returned to the Bears` camp Friday after a heart-to-heart talk with coach Mike Ditka.
Jackson missed Friday morning`s team meeting and practice, and the club initially invoked a one-game suspension. But following the midday meeting in Ditka`s office, the suspension was rescinded and Jackson was left with a fine of $6,000 for being absent since Wednesday.
”I did very little talking; he did most of the talking,” Jackson said of Ditka. ”But he heard what I had to say. He was able to relate to where I was coming from.
”I would just like to apologize for being out. And for the guys who were concerned and worried about me, everything is okay and I will be back Saturday.
”As far as my teammates are concerned, that`s why I took so long thinking about it, because I didn`t want to let them down.”
Jackson is scheduled to practice Saturday and Sunday. His availability for Monday night`s game in Cleveland will be determined after those workouts. Though he was replaced as a starter by Lorenzo Lynch following a poor performance in last Sunday`s loss to Houston, Jackson`s boycott of practice was not precipitated just by those events.
”It goes back to the Tampa game (Oct. 8); it really doesn`t have much to do with the Houston game,” Ditka said. ”It has to do with me more than anything else. I don`t think the demotion was the major factor.”
Said Jackson: ”A lot of people have been saying it was an impulse thing. You can`t just react when bad things happen to you. It was going on for a few weeks, and I had been contemplating it then. This was the last straw.
”I feel a lot better. We got things squared away, our differences. It did built up, but it is over now.”
”I talked to Vestee, and he explained his thoughts and I explained mine,” Ditka said. ”He is still a member of this team and will continue to be a member of this team. There won`t be any suspension. He needed a couple of days to work it out on his own. That was good enough for me.”
Jackson was more perturbed that he was notified of his demotion in front of his teammates in a Monday meeting than he was about the demotion itself.
”It wasn`t exactly about losing my starting job . . . I didn`t play great,” Jackson said. ”It was more the way of finding out. Everyone is human, and when you`re the head coach, you can`t do everything the way people want it to be done. At the time, personally, he handled it wrong for me. We`ve worked that out.”
Said Ditka: ”My motives are good; sometimes my methods stink. I still had to have a chance to explain my side and Vestee had to have a chance to explain his side. That`s hard to do unless you talk.”
Jackson said he did a lot of soul-searching the last four days in his northwest suburban home.
”It has been tough. I needed the time to get my mind straight and to realize what I wanted. It was either to play or not to play, and I decided to play.
”My mom is in town, and my sister was calling me every day, so we talked quite a bit, and they helped me work things out.”
”Everything in life comes back to communicating,” Ditka said. ”Whether I`m the one not communicating or not, we all have to have a chance to communicate. Once he communicated to me what his feelings were and why he needed some time alone, I understood.
”It`s like anything else-you wish it could have happened three days earlier, or two days earlier, but it didn`t. But he will be at practice Saturday and Sunday and go to Cleveland.
”The situation, as far as I`m concerned, is dead and buried. I`ve never been one to hold a grudge. In the case of Vestee, he has always been an outstanding individual on this football team.”
Jackson, who led the Bears with eight interceptions last season, is looking for his first theft this year. He believes he can concentrate on football now.
