BEREA, Ohio -- In the tiny town of Belle Glade, Fla., located along the fertile stretch of loam and silt on the southeast shore of Lake Okeechobee, those hard-working folks who don't earn their paycheck working in the nearby Glades Correctional Institution mostly grow sugarcane, some citrus fruits and a variety of winter vegetables.

But the natural resource of which the city of approximately 17,000 is most proud, of course, is the number of skilled athletes it has produced, young men who have used football to secure a college education, and, in several cases, advanced to the NFL.

It would be difficult to find an area that, on a per capita basis, has seen so many native sons move on to the professional level. And this summer, Cleveland Browns tailback James Jackson, a third-round draft choice from the University of Miami, figures to join a roster that includes Tampa Bay wide receiver Reidel Anthony, Jacksonville tailback Fred Taylor and Arizona linebacker Johnny Rutledge, among others.

	“	Probably the only thing that kept me out of the first round was the injury. Going into my senior year, everybody had me either No. 1 or No. 2 among the (tailback prospects) for the draft. And then I had to sit there on draft day and watch players' names getting called and thinking about how I was a better player than some of them. ”
		— James Jackson, Browns rookie running back

A running back with size, explosiveness and undeniable confidence, Jackson worked with the first-unit offense in last Saturday afternoon's first training camp scrimmage here. And while his performance behind the Browns' makeshift offensive line left some lingering questions, there is a growing suspicion he eventually will be the long-term answer to the team's rushing game woes.

In the three months since Jackson proclaimed himself the Browns' new franchise back during a moment of conference call bravado, he has toned down the act a bit, and his humility was tested on the first play of the scrimmage when he attempted to cut back to the left side and was soundly de-cleated by free safety Percy Ellsworth.

But the 25-year-old rookie knows the Butch Davis offense, knows that his familiarity with the Cleveland rookie head coach gives him an unspoken edge, knows that he is the most talented back on a roster chock-full of inexperienced runners. Even with his guard up during a visit with an out-of-town reporter, the Jackson confidence is palpable.

"Probably the only thing that kept me out of the first round was the injury," said Jackson of the severely sprained right foot suffered in the Sugar Bowl, an injury that limited predraft workouts and clearly impacted his stock. "Going into my senior year, everybody had me either No. 1 or No. 2 among the (tailback prospects) for the draft. And then I had to sit there on draft day and watch players' names getting called and thinking about how I was a better player than some of them. I won't allow myself to be bitter about it, but it does drive me a bit."

There were six tailbacks who went off the board ahead of Jackson in April and this much seems certain: That would not have occurred had he been healthy during the spring.

The foot injury kept Jackson from working out at the combine sessions in Indianapolis and, at an on-campus audition for a score of league scouts, he was clocked at a pedestrian 4.68 seconds in the always critical 40-yard dash. Davis knew better, understood the scope of the injury and the breadth of Jackson's talent, arranged a private workout and barely blinked when Jackson posted three consecutive times in the 4.4s.

Knowing he had inherited an offense in which the leading rusher had gained just 512 yards last season and 452 yards in 1999, Davis toyed briefly with the notion of selecting a running back with the third overall choice in this year's draft. But with Jackson's draft stock plummeting, he also knew there was an opportunity for a potential heist, and he waited until the third round to enact it.

Davis insisted last weekend that Jackson has been the victim of misfortune, acknowledged that the past injury problems might make him more suspect than prospect in the eyes of some scouts and coaches, but emphasized this is a back he knows better than any of the other people who had evaluated him before the draft.

"He had the one injury, the foot, his senior year and that was it," Davis said. "Now during the junior season, there were some things, but he practiced on days he shouldn't have even been on the field. He's big, he's explosive, he catches the ball well. Why wouldn't you take him in the third round? Heck, there was a lot of debate going into his senior year about whether he was the best back in the country. People talked about LaDainian Tomlinson, but James played in more of a pro-style offense, you know? I know what a hard worker he is. I knew what we were getting."

Indeed, hard work is as much a part of the Belle Glade ethic as low pay. It is a simple lifestyle there, one with few diversions and even fewer distractions. The crime rate is low, in part because you can't still much from folks who have such modest possessions, more as a result of values gained early on. Very few of the inmates in the nearby prison list Belle Glade as their hometown.

The nearest mall is in ritzy Palm Beach. There is no Cineplex, not even a tiny movie theater. And so the young men left weights and some of them still chase rabbits through the cane fields. They line up on Friday nights for their beloved Glades Central High School and hope the crowd in the wooden bleachers includes some college recruiters.

The ones who beat the incredible odds and earn a spot on an NFL roster return frequently to inspire their successors. If they don't get back in person, they check in by phone, as Taylor did often with Jackson.

"It is," Jackson said, "like our own little fraternity. There is a certain pride in being part of what goes on down in Belle Glade. You don't want the string of success to snap with you, OK?"

For now, Jackson is more concerned about learning the ropes than he is with strings. Cleveland desperately needs a feature-type tailback, a runner who can add consistency to an offense that needs to surround prize quarterback Tim Couch with more weapons, an attack that statistically rated dead last in the league each of the past two seasons.

Even privately, Davis won't concede that Jackson has the best chance to be that guy, but it is more than coincidence that the rookie's contract includes more than $1 million in potential performance incentives. They are the kind of bonuses not typically part of the contract for a third-round pick, a quiet signal the Browns expect Jackson to out-perform his draft status.

Barring a trade for someone like Mike Anderson of Denver, a rumor that seems to be stoked here on a weekly basis, Davis will have to divine that back from a group of six contenders who have an aggregate 11 regular-season starts and 657 yards. Davis released the senior-most back, Errict Rhett, a couple hours after the Saturday scrimmage. That left second-year pros Travis Prentice and Jamel White as the most experienced tailbacks on the roster. The others - Jackson, Ben Gay (who was the star of the scrimmage), Carl Fair and Rahshon Spikes - have never played in a regular-season NFL contest.

Davis sorely needs one of the young players to step up and take some of the pressure off Couch, and he would prefer to not deploy a tailback-by-committee approach. Good call, since it rarely succeeds at the NFL level, where it is always better to have one stud than a confluence of backs with equally mundane abilities.

Since 1990, there have been 132 playoff teams and 73 of them ranked among the top 10 in rushing offense, while 75 had a 1,000-yard rusher in the starting lineup. Forty-two of the clubs had a back who carried the ball 300 times or more. Thirty-nine of the teams had a tailback who logged more than 80 percent of his club's rushing attempts On the flip side, just 15 of the 132 playoff qualifiers advanced into postseason play with two backs who had more than 150 rushes each, in essence the committee approach to running the ball.

Unaware of those statistics, Jackson noted Saturday that he preferred "to be a workhorse and not a sharer."

In high school, he played two seasons behind Taylor. At Miami, he was the caddy for Edgerrin James. Ironic that, in the NFL, he might actually be competing with the most nondescript bunch of backs he has ever encountered. Jackson declined to agree with that analysis, but did concede he is as good as anyone else on the roster.

The oldest of three boys in his family, Jackson actually fought for the upper berth in the bunk bed of a room he shared with his two brothers. His rationale: A few feet closer to the stars, closer to the dream of an NFL career, an aspiration since he was 6 years old and met then-New Orleans all-pro linebacker Rickey Jackson, who urged him to make the sky the limit.

There aren't many Belle Glade kids who get into an NFL training camp, and then don't complete the task of earning a roster spot, and Jackson doesn't want to let down the folks at home. Mostly, though, he doesn't want to disappoint himself. On that first cutback run Saturday, when Jackson was planted in the hole by Ellsworth, the veteran safety sidled up to the rookie and he whispered something in his ear.

"He told me," recalled Jackson a couple hours later, "that I'm too good to get hit in the backfield or on the line like that. He said, 'Put one of those moves on, man, and then just keep running.' It made me feel good to know a veteran like that sees my talent. It made me feel like I'm going to be a player in this league."

Len Pasquarelli is a senior NFL writer for ESPN.com.