GREEN BAY — Ha Ha Clinton-Dix still remembers the first time he saw Domani Jackson. And that initial impression helps explain in part why he is convinced that his fellow Alabama alum will succeed — adversity be damned — with the Green Bay Packers, his former team. 

“I was with him at his highs, and I was with him at his lows,” Clinton-Dix said earlier this month when asked about the rookie sixth-round cornerback during an appearance on “Wilde & Tausch” on ESPN Wisconsin. “He has unbelievable talent — fast, can cover, can do all the things right — and he’s a great person. I think he’ll be fine.”

The roots of Clinton-Dix’s view of his protégé can be traced to late December 2023, when the Crimson Tide came to Jackson’s native Southern California in preparation for its College Football Playoff matchup with Michigan in the Rose Bowl.

The 6-foot, 194-pound Jackson, who’d been born in San Diego and played his high-school ball at traditional powerhouse Mater Dei in Santa Ana, was now in the transfer portal after spending his first two college seasons at USC.

And head coach Nick Saban and the Tide wanted him. Badly. 

“He came out to our practice, and Coach Saban spent probably two hours on the field just talking with this guy, spending time with him,” Clinton-Dix recalled. “He was a great player, a hell of a player, coming from USC.”

Jackson had been a five-star recruit coming out of Mater Dei, the No. 2 ranked cornerback in his class (behind only now-Jacksonville Jaguars wide receiver/cornerback Travis Hunter, the No. 2 overall pick in the 2025 NFL Draft) and the No. 1 overall recruit in the state of California. But the knee injury he’d suffered as a senior in high school bothered him during his true freshman season for the Trojans, and while he started 11 games for USC as a sophomore, he’d opted to enter the portal.

And as much as Alabama wanted him, he wanted to play for Saban, who’d won seven national championships as a coach — including six at Alabama.

“And just when he got here, Coach Saban decided to retire,” Clinton-Dix, who won two of those Tide titles playing for Saban, continued. “And the first person I called was Domani. He had just gotten in town, just got situated, and I was worried about him. I called him, like, ‘Hey, how are you doing, man? Coach is retiring. How are you feeling, man?’

“The portal was [still] open, and the first thing he told me was, ‘I just got here. I love it here. I’m not going anywhere.’ And he hung up the phone on me.

“And I just kind of fell in love with Domani from there.”

But Saban’s retirement was only the beginning of Jackson’s challenges. As a junior, Jackson started all 13 of the Tide’s games and recorded 52 tackles, two tackles for loss and two interceptions while breaking up nine passed and forcing a fumble. But as a senior last season, he was benched during a mid-October win at Missouri and didn’t regain his starting spot until three weeks later.

“That first week after I was benched at Mizzou, I know that messed with my mind,” Jackson admitted in advance of the Packers kicking off their first organized team activity practice of the offseason on Tuesday. “It was a reality check.”

It was also a blow to Jackson’s confidence, and Clinton-Dix saw the signs immediately. After all, despite being a consensus All-American at Alabama in 2013, a first-round draft pick by the Packers in 2014 and an All-Pro and Pro Bowl pick in 2016, Clinton-Dix had been there himself.

Only in his case, he was shipped out to the then-Washington Redskins at the 2018 NFL trade deadline — despite having three interceptions at the time — and wound up spending time with five other NFL teams before being out of the league by 2022.

That’s why Clinton-Dix immediately went into “older brother” mode (in Jackson’s words) and pulled him back from the brink.

“It’s not what you have done in the past. It’s, what have you done lately? And that’s the most important thing that I tell our players,” said Clinton-Dix, now in his fourth year as the Tide’s director of player development. “My biggest thing was, how is he going to handle this adversity? Is he going to be a cancer coming into the building? Is he going to have a bad attitude? Start not going to class? But none of that shifted.

“He still came into the building being the same exact person. His energy was great, and he held himself accountable. He took full responsibility, and I think that really helped him pivot through that adversity.

“I told him, ‘I didn’t face my adversity until I got to NFL.’ Why? Because I was around so many great players at Alabama. If I made a mistake, my team was going to come up for me.

“So I didn’t face my adversity until I got to the league, where I made my mistakes, and missed my tackles, where the magnifying glass was really on me, and I had to figure out. And I think once you can pinpoint the things you need to get better at, it allows you to grow. And I think him being able to face that adversity in college, it’ll help him in the NFL, having faced that already.”

That’s what Packers general manager Brian Gutekunst saw, too.

“He’s been through some adversity, and he’s made it to the other side of that, which I thought was something that drew us to him a little bit,” Gutekunst said after the draft. “I think what we ask of those guys playing outside corner as far as size, length and speed, he has that.”

After his benching, Jackson wound up starting the Tide’s final three games, and had his best performances in a win over Oklahoma, an SEC championship loss to Georgia and a CFP loss to eventual national-champion Indiana.

Now it’s time for the 23-year-old to keep showing the growth Clinton-Dix believes he experienced in Tuscaloosa, with the Packers cornerback position full of open competitions.

“Getting benched and just having to accept that role, it was tough, because I’d never been in that situation before. But I thank God put me in the position so I’m here and I can build on that,” Jackson said. “It’s hard being that No. 1 guy all the way through [high school and college]. And then when you get here, you go through that, because you’re not really the [expletive] like you thought. You’re battling each day, and it’s sink or swim, and someone’s going to pass you up. So most definitely, I feel like I’m more equipped with what I went through.”

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