What’s different about these Jets? They actually have good players.
Asked for his impression of the New York Jets after they soundly defeated his Green Bay Packers this past Sunday, Aaron Rodgers began with this insight during his weekly appearance Tuesday on “The Pat McAfee Show”: “Well, they’ve got a lot of good players.”
In regard to another team at another time, that comment might have come off as the typically banal response of an athlete disinclined to dip his toes into more controversial or analytically complex waters.
In this case, Rodgers summed things up rather perfectly.
The reason this year’s Jets have emerged as one of the NFL’s surprise teams after six games can be boiled down to the fact that, in stark opposition to most of the past decade, they actually do have good players. Not just some good players but, as the Packers quarterback noted, a lot of them.
And most of those players are young, meaning the team finally looks to have a bright future after years spent wandering particularly barren portions of the NFL wilderness. In fact, it’s looking increasingly possible that the league’s longest active playoff drought could end as soon as this season.
As one of those talented young players put it recently: “Bro, we’re so good.”
That was 21-year-old running back Breece Hall, a second-round draft pick this year who told reporters that he and other Jets rookies shared that sentiment after a 40-17 Week 5 win over the Miami Dolphins. Hall accounted for 197 yards from scrimmage and a touchdown in that game, then piled up 121 more yards against the Packers, including a backbreaking scoring run from 34 yards out that went a long way toward sealing the Jets’ 27-10 road victory.
After the Jets needed unlikely, last-minute comebacks to get their first two victories, the authority with which they have earned their past two – giving them a three-game winning streak and a 4-2 record heading into Sunday’s game at the Denver Broncos – signals that things could be coming together quickly. Nothing symbolized their newfound swagger, not to mention their coterie of building blocks on both sides of the ball, more than 22-year-old cornerback Ahmad “Sauce” Gardner strutting about Green Bay’s Lambeau Field wearing a “Cheesehead.”
“We know what we’ve got,” Gardner, the No. 4 pick in this year’s draft, told reporters after the game. “We’re just going to keep going.”
Gardner and Hall were two of four players the Jets selected among the draft’s top 40 picks, along with wide receiver Garrett Wilson and linebacker Jermaine Johnson II. The fourth round brought two more players, tackle Max Mitchell and defensive lineman Micheal Clemons, who have also made notable contributions. They bolstered a collection of youthful talent that included three picks from the top 35 of the 2021 draft – quarterback Zach Wilson, offensive lineman Alijah Vera-Tucker and wide receiver Elijah Moore – as well as early contributors from that draft in fourth-round running back Michael Carter, fifth-round defensive back Michael Carter II and sixth-round cornerback Brandin Echols.
Garrett Wilson, Vera-Tucker, Hall, Michael Carter and Zach Wilson account for five of the Jets’ seven highest-graded players on offense, per Pro Football Focus. The team’s leaders on the other side of the ball are more of a mix of youngsters and veterans, but the standout is defensive tackle Quinnen Williams, who is still just 24 after New York made him the third pick in the 2019 draft.
Against the Packers, Williams racked up five tackles, two sacks, three quarterback hits, two tackles for a loss, one forced fumble and a blocked extra point attempt in a performance that earned him AFC defensive player of the week honors. With 24 total pressures this season (per PFF), he is tied for the most among interior linemen with the Los Angeles Rams’ Aaron Donald and the Kansas City Chiefs’ Chris Jones.
“He’s playing at a different level,” Jets Coach Robert Saleh said of Williams after the win at Green Bay. “But it has to continue. . . . If he keeps doing this, there’s no reason he shouldn’t make the Pro Bowl, be all-pro and earn all the accolades he can get.”
Hall and Gardner have staked early claims as front-runners for NFL rookie of the year honors on offense and defense. The 6-foot-3 Gardner is 13th among all cornerbacks in PFF coverage grade and ninth in passer rating allowed.
It helps any team’s quest for talent to have a slew of top-40 picks in successive drafts, but Jets General Manager Joe Douglas still deserves credit for adroit wheeling and dealing. After Douglas took over the team in June 2019, his trades included sending away safety Jamal Adams and quarterback Sam Darnold for a combined draft haul that included two first-rounders and selections in the second, third, fourth and sixth rounds over 2021 and 2022. That war chest helped in moving up for Hall and Vera-Tucker, who ranks seventh in ESPN’s pass-block win rate while starting games this season at right guard, right tackle and left tackle, effectively patching holes in the Jets’ injury-racked offensive line.
It all has brought about significant change for a team whose recent rosters tended to be bereft of both quality depth and overall talent. Since the Jets’ last playoff appearance after the 2010 season, they have drafted just four players who earned a Pro Bowl selection (via Pro Football Reference). That number is the lowest total in the NFL over that span, and of that group, Adams is the only player with multiple Pro Bowl nods.
A study by the Jets-centric website Gang Green Nation in 2019, following the firing of former general manager Mike Maccagnan – which came only after the team allowed him to oversee that year’s draft and spend millions in free agency – used Pro Football Reference’s approximate value metric to determine that Maccagnan made the league’s worst draft picks after the first round from his 2015 hiring through 2018. The site used a similar method to conclude that John Idzik, the Jets’ general manager in 2013 and 2014, was essentially just as dismal.
The Jets also have gotten no Pro Bowl seasons since 2016 out of players who arrived via trade or free agency, outside 2018 special teamers Jason Myers and Andre Roberts.
Even after Douglas replaced Maccagnan, his tenure got off to a slow start with a 2020 draft that has yet to produce a regular starter apart from sixth-round punter Braden Mann. Douglas’s first pick at No. 11 overall, tackle Mekhi Becton, has not played since Week 1 of the 2021 season amid continual injury issues.
Since then, though, Douglas has landed plenty of effective starters and reserves, including: wide receiver Corey Davis, tight ends Tyler Conklin and C.J. Uzomah, guard Laken Tomlinson, tackles Duane Brown and George Fant, center Connor McGovern, pass rusher Carl Lawson, defensive linemen Sheldon Rankins and Solomon Thomas, linebacker Kwon Alexander, cornerback D.J. Reed and safeties Jordan Whitehead and Lamarcus Joyner. Douglas also has managed to snatch a few impact players off waivers, including wide receiver Braxton Berrios, defensive lineman John Franklin-Myers, linebacker Quincy Williams (Quinnen’s older brother) and guard Nate Herbig.
As if to show that Jets fans can never have an overabundance of nice things, though, the offensive additions have created a competition for pass targets on a team that, thanks to an improved defense, hasn’t had to throw as much in recent games. As a result, Moore recently lodged a trade request, per multiple reports, joining fellow wide receiver Denzel Mims, a 2020 second-round pick who made a similar demand in August.
Some individual unhappiness aside, the overall result has been a squad that suddenly looks well stocked on offense – albeit with lingering questions about whether drafting Zach Wilson with the No. 2 pick last year will pay off in the form of a franchise quarterback – and has quality players at every level of its defense. Saleh deserves credit for instilling a new culture with his upbeat demeanor, but the biggest difference between these Jets and woeful recent iterations is what Rodgers said.
“They’ve got good schemes, good players,” he told McAfee.
“They added to their mix since we played them last year [in the preseason], obviously through the draft and a couple of guys in free agency that can really play. They’ve got a couple of guys that can really cover. They’ve got veteran leadership on the back end. . . . The D-line is stout.”
Rodgers went on to single out Gardner as a “stud young corner . . . who can really play” and pointed to the Jets’ offensive “weapons,” including Hall, while describing Wilson as someone who will be “a really talented guy in the league for a long time.”
To hear the four-time NFL MVP tell it, the Jets have gone from a longtime laughingstock to a team that has the goods.
To comment, please create a screen name in your profile
To comment, please verify your email address
Conversation
This discussion has ended. Please join elsewhere on Boston.com