Depth Chart Breakdown
Credit to Joe Douglas for the roster turnover of all roster turnovers.
☀️ Good Morning,
The draft has come and gone, and now we largely know who will be representing your 2022 New York Jets. I do think there will be a few additions through camp as players get cut, but by and large, this is it.
💚 Robert Saleh made an interesting comment about Jermaine Johnson. According to the Jets coach, the Jets would have taken him at #10 if Atlanta had taken Garrett Wilson. In the end, they got both, but it shows just how much they valued Johnson.
😮 A couple of good notes from Rich Cimini: “Breece Hall had a 24-game streak with a Rush TD, spanning the 2020 and 2021 seasons -- longest streak by any player in FBS history.”
🎯 “First RB since start of 2006 to register a sub-4.4 in 40 AND have 40/" vert at combine.”
✈️ Alcorn State cornerback Juwan Taylor announced on Twitter that he’d been invited to camp with the Jets.
💯 According to Scouts Inc. The Jets are the first team since 2004 (when scouts Inc started) to draft three players who were graded above 90 on a 100-point scale. Sauce Gardner (93), Garrett Wilson (93) and Jermaine Johnson (92).
📊 Depth Chart
This was put together by Robby Sabbo and the team at Jets X-Factor and it illustrates the depth that we’ve got on the team at the moment
We’ve come a long way
It’s hard to not be impressed with what Joe Douglas has done to completely revitalize this roster. If you were to just take the skill position players from the final games of the 2020 season you’d have seen:
QB Sam Darnold
RB Frank Gore
WR B. Perriman
WR J. Crowder
WR D. Mims
TE C. Herndon
TE R. Griffin
As long as there are no major injuries in camp, you can expect to see this offense in week one:
QB - Zach Wilson
RB - Breece Hall
RB - Michael Carter
WR - Corey Davis
WR - Garrett Wilson
WR - Elijah Moore
WR - Braxton Berrios
TE - CJ Uzomah
TE - Tyler Conklin
TE - Jeremy Ruckert
That’s an incredible turnaround, at least on paper. It’s younger, faster more athletic, and more dynamic, an offense designed for the modern NFL. It’s a young offense, and it’s young by design. The thought process is that all of these players can grow together and develop long-term chemistry along the way.
I would also argue that the offensive line is the best it’s been for some time, a lot will rest on Mekhi Becton as having a healthy and motivated Becton could catapult this offensive line into the elite category in the NFL. If Becton struggles to stay healthy and the Jets are either forced to play rookie Max Mitchell or McDermott/Edoga then that changes things considerably.
New York New York, Tight End, Tight End
As you can see from the chart above, the Jets have finally spent considerable resources on the TE position. It’s a well-said narrative that a TE is a young QB’s best friend, and the Jets have added three playmakers to that position alone this off-season to try and help Zach Wilson. How the Jets line up this year in terms of personnel groupings is going to be something to watch, will they play a lot more 12 (2 WR and 2 TE), the Jets used that on 20% of snaps last season, just 1% less than the league average.
Fighting for Position
The running back room will be a key positional battle to watch. Last year the Jets carried 4 running backs on their final 53, and you can almost guarantee that Michael Carter, Breece Hall, and Tevin Coleman will make the team, which means you have 6 players fighting for one spot on the roster. Ty Johnson will start with the inside track, but the Jets liked what Walter brought to the team last season, and Zonovan Knight the UDFA has a ton of talent.
Defensively the Jets have completely remade their secondary. Prized free-agent signing DJ Reed will be joined by Sauce Gardner on the outside, which means the Jets now have an incredible amount of depth with Hall and Echols backing them up. Whitehead will partner with LaMarcus Joyner to form an interesting safety duo, I like Joyner as a safety and was disappointed we didn’t get to see him last year. The free safety position does concern me for depth purposes, as if you’ve been reading for any period of time you’ll know I’m no fan of Ashtyn Davis.
Defensive End
If there is one thing we’ve heard time and time again about the Robert Saleh defense, it’s that no position is more important than defensive end. Saleh doesn’t like sending extra players on the blitz, the success of his system is predicated on the four linemen getting pressure. Last year the Jets had no choice but to pressure because their line couldn’t consistently gain pressure, part of that was due to the injury of Carl Lawson, but it also highlighted the lack of depth.
The Jets have tried to rectify the lack of depth by double-dipping at defensive end in the 2022 draft. Jermaine Johnson is designed for this system with his size, length and speed and Micheal Clemons offers pure power and more bend than people give him credit for. Having a healthy Lawson and adding Clemons and Johnson may allow JFM to kick back inside on certain downs, giving the Jets one of the better defensive lines in football.
Robert Saleh likes to rotate his lineman, and running 4-5 deep at defensive end will allow him to do just that.
Linebacker
The only position not to get a significant addition was linebacker. The beat told us all off-season that the Jets were happy and comfortable with the talent at the position but I’m not sure anyone believed it. Mosley, Williams and Nasrildeen is arguably the weakest starting position group heading into the 2022 season, but there is a lot of unknown there as well. What kind of step will Quincy make after seeing significant time in 2022? What will Hamsah look like in year two? Can someone like DQ Thomas who is one of my favourite UDFA signings manage to crack the team?
We also can’t forget that free agency isn’t over yet, there are still veterans out there that could help this unit, we’ll just have to wait and see if Joe Douglas wants to dip back into the player pool.
Draft Grades - Jets did well 😉
Tomorrow we’re going to get started with our player profiles. Make sure you head over to Twitter to vote on who you want to see first, right now there are three players with 27.8% of the vote, so it’s pretty tight.
It's incredible how well this draft turned out. Really couldn't ask for more. I'm really looking forward to seeing this team out there on the field. If this group stays healthy we could be in for an exciting season.
Great morning read!