Cavalry Incoming

Edition #249

Good morning!

Yesterday was a strange day for Jets fans. We woke up 5-2, our best record in over a decade to start the season. Yet we woke up with a sense of dread as we patiently waited for the MRI results on Breece Hall and Alijah Vera-Tucker.

I think most of us expected to lose Breece for the season after the late-night reports on Sunday, but few of us expected to lose AVT as well. It was a double body blow for a team whose identity has been to run the football. In true Joe Douglas fashion, he wasted very little time working the phones to find some help. The cavalry is on the way.

The Jets sent a conditional 6th-round pick to Jacksonville for running back James Robinson. We’re going to talk more about that below.

Quinnen Williams, Jeff Smith, Garrett Wilson, and Nate Herbig were all in attendance at MSG on Monday night to see the Knicks defeat the Orlando Magic 115-102, as a Knicks fan I’ve got a lot of time for that.

Count former Jets head coach Rex Ryan as someone who isn’t very impressed with 2nd-year receiver Elijah Moore requesting a trade: “You talk about a ridiculous thing. Elijah Moore requests a trade. After the team has won three straight games. Do you know how hard it is to win in this league? But Elijah Moore, you need to grow up ... The greatest players of our sport want to win over anything else ... This guy is a special talent but he needs to be part of the solution, not part of the problem.”

If the season ended today the Jets would be the 5th seed in the AFC despite having a better record than both Baltimore and Tennessee, the reason being the top four seeds are reserved for the division winners, and the Jets trail Buffalo in the AFC East.

ESPN's Adam Schefter said on NFL Now that the Green Bay Packers could be targeting either Elijah Moore or Denzel Mims as they hope to bolster their receiving core for Aaron Rodgers. The Jets have openly said they are not interested in trading Moore, and although I could see Mims being moved for the right offer I’m not sure the Jets want to make a move there right now until the situation with Moore is resolved.

The Jets officially placed Breece Hall and Alijah Vera-Tucker on IR, they promoted Zonovan Knight to the active roster and signed offensive lineman Myron Cunningham to the practice squad.

This weekend the Jets will debut their stealth black helmet. Just my two cents, but it looks epic.

According to ESPN stats when Breece Hall has been on the field for the Jets, we’ve averaged 5.6 yards a rush, the best mark in the NFL. When Hall’s been off the field we’ve averaged just 3.6 yards per carry, which would rank 29th in the NFL. So losing him for the season means a lot, especially when it’s paired with the Jets losing their best run-blocking offensive lineman in Alijah Vera-Tucker.

Yesterday I sent a message to a buddy saying that if the Jets made a move for a running back that would be Joe Douglas sending a message to the locker room. A message that said he’s buying into this 5-2 start and backing the team to continue the success all the way to the playoffs. As good as Michael Carter is and he’ll play a huge role going forward, we needed more than Ty Johnson to keep this ground game rolling.

Within hours of losing Breece Hall, Joe Douglas had found a replacement to bolster the attack for the rest of the season. With Travis Etienne taking over the reins in Jacksonville, James Robinson became expendable. Jacksonville General Manager Trent Baalke (who started his career as a scout with the Jets back in 1998) agreed to ship Robinson to New York in exchange for a conditional 6th-round pick that could become a 5th-round pick if Robinson rushes for 600 yards. Low-risk and extremely high reward.

One way to put it is that Joe Douglas traded Blake Cashman for James Robinson. The Jets got Houston’s 6th-round pick in 2023 for the oft-injured linebacker, and Douglas has turned that into a 1000-yard rusher.

Seth Walder can grade it a C+ for the jets if he likes, but the truth is this move makes so much sense on so many different levels. Plus Seth Walder thought trading up for AVT was the biggest mistake of the 2021 draft, so I can’t put too much stock in what he has to say.

Let’s look at James Robinson’s body of work so far, and considering he went undrafted out of Illinois State, it’s quite impressive:

When you average 4.5 yards a carry over your three-year career you’re doing something right. Robinson tore his Achilles against the Jets last season which brought a premature end to his 2021 campaign, but he still managed 767 yards on a career-high 4.7 yards per carry. As you can see by his receiving numbers, he’s also a very talented back in the passing game and the Jets like to target their backs leaking out of the backfield. 22 touchdowns in just 35 games played is a noticeable stat, who doesn’t want someone who has a nose for the end-zone?

It’s also worth mentioning that Robinson has shown this season that he has fully recovered from the Achilles injury with a 100-yard performance against the Chargers and 340 rushing yards on 81 carries. He may not be the home-run hitter that Hall is, but he does have big play potential and we’ve seen that on numerous occasions over his career.

Financially it also makes sense. According to Over The Cap, James Robinson will count just $546,944 against the cap for New York this season, leaving them enough room to make another move if they feel the need to. As he’s on his rookie contract, the Jets will also be afforded the ability to retain him at the end of the season, Breece should be back to start the 2023 season but you never know. Having that insurance with Robinson makes a lot of sense. With him being a restricted free agent, the Jets can match any offer, and if they tender him a contract they could be in line to receive compensation if he signs with another team. Basically, this is a no-lose situation for the Jets.

Back in 2020 during Robinson’s breakout campaign, he had some numbers that really popped. He was 8th in the league in terms of yards after contact with 764 and 6th with 3.18 yards after contact per attempt, he had 31 runs of 10+ yards which ranked him 6th in the league and he predominantly did his damage in a zone blocking scheme. His yards after contact per attempt jumped in 2021 to 3.29, which was 9th in the league for RBs who had at least 100 rushing attempts. That number has plummeted to 2.69 this year and that will be worth watching going forward.

Offensive Line

Unfortunately for the Jets, the offensive line carousel will need to keep on spinning. If we were to take a stroll down memory lane, this is what we’d see.

Pre-Season - Fant (LT), Tomlinson (LG), McGovern (C), AVT (RG), Becton (RT)
Week 1 - Fant (LT), Tomlinson (LG), McGovern (C), AVT (RG), Mitchell (RT)
Week 4 - AVT (LT), Tomlinson (LG), McGovern (C), Herbig (RG), Mitchell (RT)
Week 5 - Brown (LT), Tomlinson (LG), McGovern (C), Herbig (RG), AVT (RT)
Week 8 - Brown (LT), Tomlinson (LG), McGovern (C), Herbig (RG), Ogbuehi (RT)

When we face the Patriots we will be onto our 6th iteration of the starting offensive line, and that won’t be the last one.

George Fant is eligible to return off injured reserve this week, Coach Saleh has said that he won’t play but he has a chance to play against Buffalo in week 9, but more likely we’ll see him against the Patriots in week 11 after the Jets take their bye week in week 10. When he is fit to return, chances are he’ll take over from Ogbuehi at RT as long as Duane Brown is healthy.

Max Mitchell who has been out since leaving week 4’s game against the Pittsburgh Steelers is eligible to return after the week 8 game against the Patriots. Saleh didn’t offer up an update on Mitchell, but if both he and Fant are ready to return at the same time, Mitchell will head to the bench. If Brown gets injured, and at this point, with our luck on the offensive line I wouldn’t be surprised, Fant will head to LT and Mitchell to RT.

So cavalry is on the way for the offensive line, but you don’t replace an AVT easily. Before getting injured the Jet’s second-year man had allowed just one sack in 276 pass-blocking snaps, despite playing three different positions.

Corey Davis

With the devastating news on AVT and Breece, few paid attention to the update on Corey with Coach Saleh saying his status for Sunday’s game against New England is “up in the air” but that he was day-to-day with a knee injury.

Interestingly the medical team cleared Davis to return to the game on Sunday, but the Jets chose to keep him on the sideline as a precaution.

Davis is having a bounce-back season in New York so far in 2022 catching 19 passes for 351 yards, that 18.5 yards per reception lead all Jets receivers by a considerable margin. Jeff Smith is second on that list with 14 yards per reception but that’s based on just 2 completions. A better comparison is Elijah Moore’s 12.7 yards per reception which is based on 16 catches and is 3rd best on the Jets.

One aspect that I’ve written about historically is Corey’s blocking on the perimeter, it can’t be understated just how good he is and how important that part of his game is to the Jet’s offensive philosophy.