There’s a particular kind of toughness that doesn’t announce itself. It doesn’t show up in highlight reels or press releases. It shows up quietly, in the decision to keep going when most people would have stopped and rebuild when the easy move is to walk away.
Alaric Jackson, the Los Angeles Rams’ starting left tackle, knows that kind of toughness personally. He also knows it geographically. Jackson grew up in Windsor, Ontario, just across the river from Detroit, and attended Renaissance High School on the city’s east side. He watched that city endure its darkest years and begin, slowly and stubbornly, to come back. The lessons Detroit teaches about resilience and reinvention aren’t abstract to him. They’re part of his story.
A City That Hit the Bottom and Rebuilt Anyway
To understand Detroit’s reinvention, you have to understand how far it fell. In 1950, Detroit was the fourth-largest city in the United States, home to more than 1.8 million people and the beating heart of the American automobile industry. Then came decades of deindustrialization, suburban flight, racial inequality and financial mismanagement.
By 2013, Detroit filed for Chapter 9 bankruptcy, carrying an estimated $18 to $20 billion in debt, which is the largest municipal bankruptcy filing in U.S. history. The city’s population had dropped to roughly 700,000. An estimated 40% of its streetlights weren’t functioning, and basic services like trash pickup and snow plowing had been cut to the bone.
That’s the Detroit Alaric Jackson knew as a kid. A city defined, for a time, by what it had lost. But that’s not the end of the story.
Detroit exited bankruptcy just 18 months after filing, which is one of the fastest resolutions of any major municipal bankruptcy in U.S. history. The city shed more than $7 billion in debt as part of the restructuring. What followed was a slow, imperfect, but undeniable climb.
JPMorgan’s investment in Detroit has surpassed $2 billion. General Motors moved its headquarters back into the city. New apartment buildings, restaurants and tech companies began filling streets that once sat empty. Detroit’s population grew for the second consecutive year in 2024 and was the first back-to-back population gains the city had seen since the 1950s.
Reinvention Isn’t Linear, and Neither Is a Career
Like his city, Jackson’s own path mirrors relentless tenacity and resilience. He didn’t arrive in the NFL with fanfare. He entered the league as an undrafted free agent in 2021, a long shot who’d played college ball at Iowa and had something to prove. He proved it. He developed into a starter, earned a Super Bowl LVI ring when the Rams defeated the Cincinnati Bengals, and built himself into one of the more reliable left tackles in the NFC.
Then came the health challenges that would test everything he’d built. Jackson was twice diagnosed with blood clots, first in his lungs, then in his lower leg. The first diagnosis alone would have ended many careers. Jackson managed both conditions in consultation with the Rams’ medical staff and kept playing.
He didn’t just survive on the field; he thrived. He started 16 of 17 regular season games in 2025, missing just one due to an ankle injury. He was part of an offensive line that helped the Rams post the NFL’s top scoring offense and top total offense that season.
The parallels to Detroit’s story aren’t lost on those paying attention. A comeback doesn’t mean the hard part didn’t happen. It means you didn’t let the hard part become the final word.
The Ed Block Courage Award: A Recognition That Means Something
When the Rams announced their end-of-year team awards in January, Jackson was named the recipient of the Ed Block Courage Award, an honor given to a player who exemplifies inspiration, sportsmanship and courage. Named after former Baltimore Colts head athletic trainer Ed Block, the award isn’t handed to the most talented player or the biggest contract. It goes to the player who showed up anyway and who competed through circumstances that would justify sitting out.
Rams head coach Sean McVay was direct in his assessment of what Jackson did in 2025. “Consistency,” McVay said. “I think consistency is the truest measure of performance. He’s consistently played at a really high level. He’s shown a mental toughness, a fortitude and a physical toughness.”
That’s the same language you’d use to describe what Detroit has done over the past decade. Not flashy. Not overnight. Consistent. Stubborn. Refusing to accept the ceiling that everyone else had assigned.
Growth Requires Investment In Cities and in People
One of the clearest lessons from Detroit’s revival is that recovery doesn’t happen in isolation. It requires investment from individuals, institutions and communities willing to bet on something before the evidence is fully in.
Detroit’s gross domestic product for the region reached $322.6 billion, outpacing national growth rates over a five-year stretch. Private developers poured capital into neighborhoods that had been written off. Philanthropic organizations committed long-term dollars. And residents who never left kept showing up for a city that had, for a time, stopped showing up for them.
Jackson’s professional development reflects that same principle. His ascent from undrafted free agent to a three-year, $57 million contract extension didn’t happen because he got lucky. It happened because the Rams invested in his development, his medical support and his long-term future and because Jackson invested just as heavily in himself. He’s practiced yoga for six years. He puts in individual body maintenance work after practice. He volunteers with the Boys and Girls Club and remains involved in his community. He’s also returning to school to complete a leadership degree as part of his planning for life after football.
That’s not the profile of someone coasting on talent. That’s someone building something durable.
What a Comeback Really Looks Like
Detroit’s story is instructive precisely because it didn’t snap back. From July 2023 to July 2024, Detroit added nearly 6,800 new residents, which was a 1.1% jump that outpaced the national growth rate. New condos and apartments filled downtown, Midtown and Corktown. The city that once had an unemployment rate near 29% during the 2009 financial crisis saw its regional unemployment rate drop to a 20-year record low of 3.7% in 2023.
None of that happened quickly, and none of it was inevitable. It was the product of deliberate choices made by people who refused to write the city off.
Jackson carries that same orientation. He’s a dual Canadian-American citizen who grew up watching one of America’s most iconic cities fight its way back from the edge. He played college football in the Midwest, entered the NFL through the back door and built a career that now includes a championship ring, an award for courage, and a contract that reflects what he’s actually worth.
He’ll be the first to tell you that none of it came easy. But he’ll also tell you that easy isn’t the point.
The Enduring Lesson
What Detroit teaches and what Alaric Jackson embodies is that resilience isn’t a quality you’re born with. It’s a decision you make, repeatedly, under circumstances that give you every excuse to make a different one.
Cities fall apart. Bodies break down. Careers hit walls. The question isn’t whether hard things will happen. The question is what you do with them and whether you treat every setback as data about your limits, or as a problem to be solved on the way to something worth building.
Detroit chose the latter. Jackson chose the latter. And both are better for it.
