Open the cage

Edition #207

Good morning!

With news of every injury in pre-season, my nerves fray just a little bit more. Yesterday it was Cowboy’s tackle Tyron Smith who tore his hamstring, sidelining him for a few months.

Today the Jets roll over the road to take part in a joint practice with the Giants, if you thought the Falcons one was chippy, history would indicate that it’s about to get a lot worse. Hopefully, the players protect themselves and others with us so close to the season starting.

• In preparation for the Giant’s practice that starts today, the Jets had a gentle practice yesterday.

• Bradlee Anae just can’t stop strip-sacking QBs, a few days after he did it to Franks he did it to Flacco.

• According to reports, Flacco did perform well overall, including a red-zone touchdown to Micheal Carter while on the run.

• Micheal Carter had a good day at practice according to multiple reports with him running and catching well. Carter is still getting the starter reps and performing well.

• Calvin Jackson Jr made the catch of the day with a toe tap touchdown in the back of the end-zone.

• There was good news on both sides of the ball as Quinnen Williams was back practicing with the defense and Duane Brown joined the offensive line for the first time since being signed.

• Sauce Gardner continues to impress, he doesn’t get targeted that much…but when he does you rarely see a completion. Yesterday he had a pass deflection on a long pass attempt to Braxton Berrios. Coach Saleh is still yet to confirm that Sauce will be the starter, and he was rotating with Hall for first-team reps.

• Robert Saleh confirmed that all the starters will play on Sunday against the Giants as long as they’re healthy. So we’ll finally get to see Carl Lawson unleashed with the starting linebacker unit behind him. I’m looking forward to that.

• Elijah Riley who was released by the Jets yesterday was claimed off waivers by the Pittsburgh Steelers. He won’t be the last Jet to get claimed considering the choices we’ll need to make on the defensive line.

Yesterday I tweeted that I believed it was getting to a point where the Jets needed to make space for Lawrence Cager, the converted wide receiver who continues to impress as a tight end. The Jets roster currently stands at 80 with 27 more cuts needed, so considering the Jets’ depth at tight end, does Cager have a shot to stick?

As with most newsletters like this, I’m going to preface it by saying that we can’t get too carried away with pre-season performances, considering Cager has just 2 catches and 35 receiving yards to his name in the NFL since doing undrafted in 2020, but at the same time, it would be wrong to disregard them as insignificant, as everyone needs to start somewhere.

Cager didn’t always have it easy, he suffered from a few nagging injuries through college and after three years at Miami, he decided to transfer to Georgia for the 2019 season. He finished that year with 33 receptions for 476 yards and 4 touchdowns. Over his four-year college career, he recorded 78 receptions for 1,157 yards and 14 touchdowns.

After going undrafted he signed with the Jets and yo-yoed between the active roster and the practice squad, again being slowed by injuries (hamstring). The Jets ended up cutting him in August 2021 during cutdowns and he ended up with Cleveland before returning to the Jets in January 2022 where he changed his position to tight end.

Someone said to me yesterday “If the Jets had faith in Cager at tight end, why did they sign Uzomah and Conklin and then draft Ruckert”, that’s a good question on the face of it, but remember he decided to change positions in January, free agency started in March and the draft was in April…before any real practice sessions, chances are the Jets had no idea what they had in Cager when they signed those players.

Fast-forward four months and Cager has made the transition seamlessly with coach Saleh recently speaking about his playing weight and his mentality: "It's been fun for him to not only remake his body, right, going from receiver where he was 215 to (tight end) where he's playing now — 240, 245, picked up all that weight — the physicality of the game is not too big for him," Jets head coach Robert Saleh said. "His mindset's been a complete 180 from a year ago, in terms of how he approaches practice and how he approaches his rehab and all that stuff. It's been a really cool development to watch him over the last few weeks."

With the majority of starters sitting out the first two preseason games, Cager has been given the opportunity to showcase his talent, and he’s taken that chance with both hands. He’s been targeted 6 times, catching 5 passes for 105 yards and a touchdown, that’s an 83.3% reception rate and an average of 21 yards per reception.

I was also asked if he has the ability to block as an inline tight end in this system, which is hard to answer because he hasn’t been asked to do that all that much. Over the two pre-season games we’ve seen, he’s only been asked to run block on 16 occasions, and over those 16 snaps, he has a respectable 60.5 PFF run-block grade and a more than respectable 73.7 PFF run-block grade against Philadelphia.

If you look back at his college snaps, he was asked to run-block 555 times over four years and his PFF grade improved every single year. It started at 51.8 back as a freshman in 2015, and then climbed to 64.8 in 2017 (he missed the 2016 season with an ACL injury), 67.8 in 2018, and then finally 72.0 in 2019. Blocking as a tight end is different to blocking as a wide receiver and we have to remember that, but he absolutely showed an ability to block in the run game, and we’ve seen flashes of that.

Run-blocking is important, but creating a matchup nightmare is important too and that’s exactly what Cager offers. He’s a 6’4, 240lb tight end who runs like a wide receiver and his cutting ability has been on show over the first two preseason games. He was a 56% contested catcher in college and he managed to get over his drop issues during his final year in Georgia (2.9% drop rate).

So we know that Cager has talent and we know that the coaching staff is impressed with his transformation and application, but where does he fit on this roster?

He can almost certainly slot in as the fourth TE behind Conklin, Uzomah, and Ruckert and if the Jets only carry three running backs then they’d be able to fit a FB like Nick Bawden in as well. In edition #185 of TJW I wrote about the possibility of Ruckert playing some fullback, and that’s certainly another option to explore. He could fit into the roster as a 4th TE/6th WR but I still believe the Jets keep six out-and-out receivers this season.

It seems unlikely that the Jets would be able to pass Cager through waivers and stash him on the practice squad, so the only choice they have is to keep him on the roster. How they do it will be one of the more interesting things to watch on cutdown day, a day where the Jets will be cutting good football players, especially on the defensive line. (I’ll have a new 53-man projection out after the Giants game).

• As mentioned at the top, the Cowboys were dealt a blow with 2 x All-Pro and 8 x Pro Bowler Tyron Smith going down with a hamstring injury which will sideline him for the start of the season.

• Giants wide receiver Collin Johnson suffered a torn Achilles ruling him out for the 2022 season. Johnson was having a good camp for the Giants with 10 catches through two preseason games and was in line for an increased role in 2022.

• Outside linebacker Trey Flowers worked out for the Dolphins yesterday, Flowers enjoyed success with the Patriots but struggled to stay on the field over the last two years with Detroit. Being the right side of 30, there’s surely some gas still left in the tank.

• The Philadelphia Eagles traded DB Ugo Amadi and a 7th-round draft pick to the Titans in exchange for a 6th-round pick.