Offensive Players to Watch vs Commanders

Edition #673

Good morning! ☕

Mike Williams has been activated from the PUP🔋 that's the news. He now has 30+ days to get up ready for the season, which is more than enough time. That's a huge development for the Jets.

The Jets were scheduled to have a light practice yesterday, but with the heated exchanges on Tuesday, the Commanders coming in today and a pre-season game on Saturday, Coach Saleh decided to make it a walkthrough. Give the players a chance to breath and regroup ahead of what will be a very busy run-up to the season.

No camp notes today, but we do have some injury updates from the head coach and I’ve tried to find some more quick throws to start your Thursday morning. Then we’re going to look at the offensive players who need a good start against the Commanders on Saturday.

🟢 There is no update on the status of Ashtyn Davis who left Tuesday’s session with what appeared to be a rib injury. Davis is still being evaluated but rib injuries can linger and that’s one to watch considering Davis is an ace special teamer and is the primary safety backup between Tony Adams and Chuck Clark.

⚪ Backup offensive lineman Chris Glaser also left practice on Tuesday with an undisclosed injury and his status for Saturday is up in the air. Talking of players who need a good camp to make the roster, Glaser is certainly one of those. Any missed time is an issue for a backup in the pre-season.

🟢 On the heated exchanges that took place at Jets camp, Saleh confirmed that his number one rule is to not throw a punch. Throwing a punch at someone wearing a helmet is stupid anyway, but especially when it’s your teammates. I can guarantee that there will be punches thrown today in the combined practice. It always happens, the Lions and Giants have both just been fined $200k for fights that took place in their joint sessions.

⚪ Sorry to talk about Reddick again, but it’s the story that just won’t go away. When Reddick misses the Commanders game he’ll be fined $791k as players get fined one week of regular season salary for every game they miss. Like the $50k/day fine for missing training camp sessions, that fine is non-negotiable. So even if the Jets wanted to reverse it they can’t, unless they restructure his deal and add incentives giving him the opportunity to earn the money back that he’s lost. If he missed all three games, that’s $2.37 million on top of all his other fines. Believe he’s around $800k for missing days, $100k for mandatory minicamp, $250k for the workout bonus he lost and $300k for the discrepancy fines that are optional, but that Saleh said the Jets would likely lose. Add all that up and we’re talking close to $4 million in fines. Wow.

🟢 Quincy Williams made the huge step up last year and you feel as though he can still go to a higher level. When asked what’s different, this is what Quincy had to say: "I wouldn't say slowed down, more like the anticipation is there," Williams said. "Seeing the same thing over and over and also realizing that offenses are really the same, they just dress it up differently. Just having that mindset of: What's going to happen next? The anticipation has helped me out a lot. So there comes preparation, game study and then also communicating with the rest of my teammates. C.J. [Mosley] sees something, I see something we speak to each other and we're speaking the same language."

⚪ The Jets picked Williams up off waivers from Jacksonville and Saleh said that the guys who hit straight away are the anomalies not the norm - "We celebrate the anomalies, the handful of guys that just explode onto the scene and they become great the second they hit the field," Saleh said. "There are some guys, they just take time. It's OK if it takes two, three, four years. But we've been fortunate. We've had the same system now on defense going into our fourth year. He's been with us for four years and it's just incrementally getting better because there's a lot of recall. Like we said, it's one kick and repping it 1,000 times."

🟢 Jamien Sherwood has reportedly been one of the most impressive players in camp so far and he’ll be working this year to carve out a bigger role. The Jets often only play 2 linebackers and unless C.J. Mosley is injured or Quincy is injured, you imagine they’ll be the starters - "Just like every man, it's a grind," he said. "It's about consistency. And for me, it's about feeding my family. So it's about whatever chance, whatever opportunity I get, I just have to go in with the mindset that I'm taking care of my family. It's not just about me. It's about my love and regard for the man next to me. And you know, it's tiring, it gets hard, but you know, it's about the man next to me, and my mom. So that's why I got no choice but to go out there and do my best every day."

⚪ Sticking with the linebackers, Breece Hall is enjoying the daily tussles and believes it’s helping him become a better player - "Going against guys like Quincy, C.J. [Mosley], all of them every day, it's competitive and we all go back and forth with our one-on-ones, so it keeps everything fresh," Hall said. "It's not like I'm beating them all the time, which is what I'm trying to do every play, They got me a lot better since my rookie year. But now it's like I've had this offseason to actually get better and not just back to playing football, so it's just been feeling good to be back out there every day."

🟢 I think this was my favourite quote from Breece. Ever since I’ve been doing this, accountability or a lack of it has been a common theme. "We hold the highest standard for each other," he explained. "Aaron's not scared to get on me, I'm not scared to get on him, we're not scared to get on Garrett, Garret's not scared to get on us. We expect perfection from each other. And sometimes you have debates, and honestly, a lot of the time we'll be talking about the goofiest dumb stuff. So it's literally like big-brother-little-brother conversations. We all hate losing. We're just always getting on each other and telling each other, 'Let's go, let's make a play.' It's just upholding that standard that we have with each other every day."

✍️ The Jets have signed former Colts RB Deon Jackson to a deal. He spent some time with Cleveland and the Giants last year and I'd put him as a long shot to make this 53.

Starters don’t play in week one, and there’s a chance that a lot of the main guys won’t take to the field at all this pre-season. I always go back and forth on whether that’s a good idea, to go from sessions to full throttle Monday Night Football. But it is what it is, and it’s the way the NFL is going.

While not seeing the starters out there is frustrating at times and it makes the event a poorer spectacle, for fans who really care about the entire 53, it’s an opportunity to see guys who may only play a handful of snaps in the regular season, guys who get cut, guys who are stored on the practice squad for a rainy day.

Today I thought I would highlight a handful of offensive players who need to get off to a good start. I’m going to pick a player from each position group that I’m watching in particular. You can argue that everyone playing in these games needs to get off to a good start, they’re playing because they’re backups, they’re all playing for their roster spot. But for some players I think the pressure it ratcheted up just a little bit more.

There’s a big difference between the pressure on Tyrod Taylor and the pressure on our first name on this list for example. Which is…