The New York Jets have completed OTA’s, and it was a far cry from the frenetic camerawork of Any Given Sunday. In fact if you didn’t know any better, you might have thought the green and white players casually jogging and taking padless reps were actors getting ready for a pressure-free day of filming. A closer look revealed more: a wildly acrobatic catch here, a thirty yard pass on a rope there… It was more than clear that these were world class athletes.
So where was the speed, the ferocity of NFL Football? Everyone knows it’s on the way, but Jets Head Coach Robert Saleh doesn’t think it’s quite the time yet. He knows his lauded draft class has spent the last five or six months training for combine drills, prepping for interviews, and flying back and forth across the country for pre-draft visits. Saleh believes that throwing his athletes straight into high intensity football activities is a recipe for injury, and after the last year of seemingly endless additions to the injury report and IR, the Jets are willing to try some unusual tactics. He doesn’t believe a few days in late May are going to answer any major questions, nor should he. So for the time being, it’s like a practice field full of Woodersons out there, and Zach Wilson hikes the ball to “blue, 42, alright, alright, alright.”
https://twitter.com/connor_j_hughes/status/1532024518323101696?s=21&t=FthRjzdCg33qHc7uCyYuFw
But it’s not carefree keg stands in the woods for everybody. That excitement mixed with anxiety and a dash of tentative hope makes for those special cocktails called optimism, and New York Jets fans are knocking them back pretty hard these days. And who can blame them after the past decade? This isn’t the optimism of the Bengals fans, who are coming down off of a near loss in the Super Bowl. This isn’t the optimism of the Chiefs fans, who have yet to fall short of the AFC Championship Game with Patrick Mahomes under center. This is the optimism of the complete and utter unknown.
It’s easy to talk yourself into the sheer number of first round draft choices GM Joe Douglas has been able to add to the roster, and the potential growth for a young coaching staff going into its second year. After all of the player acquisitions and draft picks, the favorite phrase is “It all depends on Zach Wilson now!” Yet the truth is far less clear, and one word can sum up the Jets with astounding accuracy: Inexperience.
https://twitter.com/nyjets/status/1520176104467689472?s=21&t=FthRjzdCg33qHc7uCyYuFw
The QB has 13 career NFL starts. Two of the top three receivers (Moore, Wilson) have a combined 6 career NFL starts. The top two RB’s (Hall, Carter) have a combined 11 career NFL starts. Two of the starting Offensive Linemen (Vera-Tucker, Becton) have 30 career NFL starts between them. That means that over half of the Jets primary offensive lineup combine for 60 career pro starts, meanwhile their Week 1 opponent Lamar Jackson has 53 (including playoffs) under his belt alone. Jackson is certainly accomplished, but by most standards even he is a young pro.
Turning to the defensive side of the ball, the Jets have four key players (Gardner, Carter II, Johnson II, Quincy Williams) who account for 28 career NFL starts as a group.
Additionally, there are six veterans who project as starters (Tomlinson, Uzomah, Lawson, Reed, Whitehead, Joyner) who have a total of 1 start in a Jets uniform between them. With the unproven nature of the HC, OC, and DC, who total approximately 1 season of experience each in their current positions, one simply cannot deny that the floor for this team is as low as any team in the NFL at this point.
Yet for all of those same reasons, their ceiling must also be as high as almost any team in the NFL. In a sport that is largely an unknown at any given time, the New York Jets are in their own special category of unknown. The talent has been assembled. The pedigree is indisputably present. Vegas had their win total at just 5.5, and the over has quickly become a favorite bet for both Jets supporters and impartial gamblers alike. Any projected outcome for the Jets this season is probably as valid as any other, but most of the green and white faithful can’t stop their rising excitement… and those who had kept that optimism in check are probably joining in the J-E-T-S chant with everyone else after the Jets released their very own 5 episode hype video.
https://twitter.com/nyjets/status/1537619790126252034?s=21&t=FthRjzdCg33qHc7uCyYuFw
Follow Max on Twitter: @TheMaxDean
*All Career Start Stats via Pro-Football-Reference.com