Jets Continue To Add Depth

Edition #824

☀️ Good morning ☕

If you were hoping to open today’s edition to news of some marquee signings then you’re going to be severely disappointed.

The Jets continued to shop in the bargain aisle adding depth pieces to the backend of the roster and I don’t expect that to change over the coming weeks.

You do get the sense that the Jets are only going to be as good as their rookie class in 2025. If we hit on 3-4 prospects then who knows.

🟢 The Jets have agreed to a one year deal with RB Kene Nwangwu for up to $2.5M.

🟢 The Jets have signed punter Austin McNamara who was with the Bengals last pre-season before being cut. He won Big 12 Special Teams Player of the Year in 2023 as a member of the Texas Tech Red Raiders.

🟢 The Jets also agreed to a one-year deal with former Rams wide receiver Tyler Johnson. He’s played with 3 different teams since being selected by the Bucs in 2020 and last year was his most productive season with 26 catches for 291 yards and 1 touchdown. He didn’t have a single drop on 41 targets and he came down with 5 of his 8 contested catches for a 62.5% success rate. He’s potentially a WR3, but the Jets still need help in that department.

🟢 The Jets also agreed to terms with former Texas Longhorn Kris Boyd. The CB spent 2024 in Houston with the Texans where he appeared in just 50 defensive snaps. He was however a key special teamer with 406 snaps and 8 tackles. He was however penalised 7 times last year which makes 25 penalties since 2019 on special teams. You’ll remember that Boyd committed a penalty in the playoffs and then proceeded to push his special teams coach Frank Ross.

🟢 Justin Fields will wear #7 with the Jets following in the footsteps of Jets QB legends like Ken O'Brien, Boomer Esiason and Geno Smith.

🟢 Free agency grades are about as pointless as draft grades, but here we are. PFF gave the Jets a B- as of Saturday. They weren’t overly impressed with the Stephens contract: “Stephens endured a tough 2024 season with the Ravens and was often picked on by opposing teams. He allowed a career-high 806 yards in coverage and has let up at least 65 receptions in his coverage in each of the past two seasons. This is a big contract to hand out for that level of performance.”

🟢 The Jets still have a lot of holes to fill but the off-season is young. PFF believe that the Jets need to give Fields more weapons, which I 100% agree with: “The Jets signed quarterback Justin Fields to a two-year, $40 million deal in free agency. Garrett Wilson, his former college teammate, is easily the team's top receiver, but New York doesn’t have much after that. The Jets released Davante Adams and may also move on from Allen Lazard. Their other receivers are Xavier Gipson, Malachi Corley and Irvin Charles, and their top tight end is Jeremy Ruckert, who has earned sub-60.0 PFF overall grades in each of his first three seasons. New York would be wise to use the No. 7 overall pick on Tetairoa McMillan or Tyler Warren.”

🟢 One more from PFF this morning. They’ve got their post free-agency rankings out, despite there being a ton of free agents still available. They had the Jets down in 25th position which is fine by me, we were in the top 10 consistently last off-season and look where that got us: “After trading for Aaron Rodgers in 2023 and his favorite target, Davante Adams, in 2024, the Jets decided to release both and take the franchise in a new direction. Justin Fields was brought in as the next quarterback, creating a low-cost opportunity to reunite him with his former Ohio State teammate, Garrett Wilson. Under new head coach Aaron Glenn, the Jets are looking to reestablish their identity as a defensive-minded team. That led to the signings of Brandon Stephens and Andre Cisco in the secondary. However, losing D.J. Reed will make it challenging to build defensive cohesion right away.”

As I’ve said a couple of times over the last week or so, I don’t disagree with what Darren Mougey is doing. This free agent class was relatively weak in comparison to years past and his biggest priority this off-season should be clearing deck and signing players like Garrett Wilson and Sauce Gardner to contract extensions. Good teams keep their good players from hitting free agency, and that’s why this free agency class was so devoid of talent. So it’s not that I disagree with what’s happening, it’s just very hard to get excited about it.

Kene Nwangwu, Austin McNamara, Tyler Johnson, Kris Boyd joining the likes of Brandon Stephens, Stone Smartt, Byron Cowart, Jay Tufele, Josh Myers, Chukwuma Okorafor and Rashad Weaver won’t have fans planning their ticker-tape parade down the Canyon of Heroes. I’m not writing any of these guys off as they all have points to prove and sometimes you create a perfect storm by creating an atmosphere where everyone has something to prove and everyone is pulling in the same direction.

I am excited about the Justin Fields signing and I am excited about the Andre Cisco signing, those are two guys who I feel have the talent to not only produce at this level but potentially provide long-term answers. I know a lot of people are already out on Fields and I get that, but a lot of people were out on Geno Smith, a lot of people were out on Sam Darnold and if you look beyond the Jets you’ll find plenty of examples like Kurt Warner etc.

But we’re fans for a reason, you’re all reading this for a reason, we’ll support this team no matter what, even after we’ve said the words or some variation of “I’m done with this damn team”.

This weekend the Jets continued to add depth to their defensive line with the signing of Derrick Nnadi, a former 3rd round pick of the Kansas City Chiefs in 2018. The fact that he remained with the Chiefs for 7 years is a tick in his favour, it also doesn’t hurt that he’s a 3x Super Bowl champion either.

Nnadi isn’t a name I’m overly familiar with, despite the Chiefs getting a ton of national and international attention. I was fully expecting to see a guy who has bounced from their practice squad to their active roster and back again. But Nnadi has played significantly more than I first thought.

If you just looked at his PFF grades you’d be pretty underwhelmed, there’s a lot of red and orange and very little green. But despite that he’s averaged over 500 snaps a season for a team who’s won a Championship ring in 42% of the seasons he’s been there. So I’m not buying that Nnadi was as bad as PFF outline. You don’t play 500 snaps a season for an Andy Reid team and you certainly don’t play 500 snaps a game for a Steve Spagnuolo defense if you’re not very good at your job.

Interestingly his three highest graded seasons came at the start of his career (2018-2020) where he mixed his snaps between a 1-tech lined up over the centre’s shoulder as a nose tackle and more 2-3 tech as a DL lined up over the guard. In two of three seasons he had a run defense grade over 80 lined up in that slot, and in all three seasons he registered 20+ defensive stops. His 7.7% run defense stop rate in 2019 was 2nd on the Chiefs and 39/119 players who played at least 100 run defense snaps. The next season it was 7.4% and the season after that it was 9% which was good for 20th best in the NFL, out of 130 players.

Then in 2021 he shifted his positioning slightly and for the first time in his career he played less than 100 snaps as a nose tackle and while that resulted in his best pass-rush season (3 sacks) his run stop percentage dropped below 7% for the first time in his career, 6.6% in 2021, 3.0% in 2022, 48% in 2023 and 3.1% in 2024. A more balanced approach to his alignment could result in more productive results

This is also where we need to appreciate Aaron Glenn’s system which does have his defensive lineman shifting their alignment on a pretty regular basis. Last season he had three different defensive lineman spend over 100 snaps lined up either over the centre or on the outside shoulder of the centre. John Penisini was the most balanced spending 227 in that position and 332 as a more traditional DT lined up over the guard, whereas Danny Shelton was 132 snaps vs 301 snaps and Nick Williams was at 104 snaps v 325 snaps. If I had to guess, I’d say that Nnadi has been signed to play that role that John Penisini played in Detroit last season and I could see him having great success there in terms of his ability to defend the run, the Achilles heal for the Jets.