AVT's Best Position

Edition #331

Good morning! ☀️

The first weekend without football is upon us. If the 2023 season starts around the same time as the 2022 season, we’re around 200 days away from the Jets kicking off their campaign. That’s pretty damn depressing isn’t it.

That does mean we have around 175 newsletters to write before we get there, so if you have any topics that you want covered, make sure you drop them in the comments.

It may be 200 days until we get started with game actions, but next month we’ll hit free agency and then its on to the draft in April, so we’ll have plenty to talk about.

🔒 With the news that Rex Ryan may be heading to Denver to join the Sean Payton staff, I saw a number yesterday from the Jets official account which stated that between 2009-2011, opposing QBs had a passer rating of 68.7 against us. Ridiculous.

📢 I also saw a good Bill Parcells quote yesterday about sticking to your prototypes in the draft: “Tom Landry told me one time “Bill, if you start drafting exceptions, pretty soon you’re going to have a team full of exceptions””.

🚨 I didn’t include this in yesterday’s column because right now it’s all noise and I genuinely don’t believe anyone knows what the Jets plan to do. But Peter King was on with Rich Eisen on Wednesday and he had this to say: “Well, we all think and I think you think that the number one step would be Aaron Rodgers. If that doesn’t work, could the number two step be Lamar Jackson ... I think they will go after Rogers, if he does play, and if they don’t get him, I think they will at least put their sniffers out and seriously consider Lamar Jackson.”

🔴⚪ The 49’ers announced they were hiring former Vikings OC Klint Kubiak to a “top role” in the Shanahan offense. Klint was a candidate for the Jets open offensive coordinator position before Nathaniel Hackett was hired.

🗻 Mike Westhoff posted that he was heading to Denver to “meet up with an old friend” - Denver are still looking for a special teams coordinator and they also happen to be heavily interested in hiring Rex Ryan as their defensive coordinator. Could we see a Jets reunion on the west coast? Westhoff is the finest special teams coach I’ve ever seen go to work, so that would be a great hire by the Broncos.

💨 Bryce Huff had the fastest average pass rush get off this season according to Next Gen Stats. It took Huff on average 0.67s to get over the line of scrimmage. That’s ahead of Myles Garrett (0.69), Josh Sweat (0.75), Justin Houston (0.75), Trey Hendrickson (0.76) and, Carl Lawson (0.76).

One of the keys to success next year for the Jets will be the play of the offensive line. We’ve spoken about it a ton and we’re probably going to speak about it a lot more over the coming weeks and months.

AVT will be returning from a triceps injury that required surgery and while as of a few weeks ago he wasn’t lifting weights yet, he did confirm that the expectation is that he’ll be ready for training camp: "I'm actually doing really well with the rehab, Not lifting yet with my elbow, but I'm going to get there pretty soon. I'll be 100% for [training] camp ready to go, no issues."

The bigger question for AVT isn’t when he’ll return, but where he’ll play once he does return.

According to ESPN stats and information, AVT became just the third lineman since 2006 to play four different positions in his first 22 starts in the league. When you really stop and think about that, it’s pretty remarkable. It’s even more remarkable to consider that he excelled.