Playing Safe?

Edition #213

Good morning.

I had absolutely no plan to send a newsletter today as I’ll be enjoying the last day of my holiday, but there were a couple of small things that were on my mind, so I quickly fired up the laptop.

Jow Douglas has done a fine job with the Jets, how fine depends on who you speak to. But one thing he has done is balanced the books for the Jets, especially when it comes to the dead cap situation.

Dead cap is basically any money that counts towards your cap that you’re paying to players who are no longer on the roster. Think of the Trumaine Johnson contract, the Jets were paying him long after they cut him.

If we go back to 2020, the Jets had the 3rd most dead cap in football, that was due to the cap mismanagement of previous GMs, $53.5 million was basically wasted cap, that’s a huge amount of money.

Spotrac @spotrac

#NFL Dead Cap Leaderboard 1. #Falcons, $64M 2. #Texans, $63.7M 3. #Bears, $62M 4. #Eagles, $58.3M 5. #Seahawks, $49.9M ... NFL Average: $26M ... 30. #Commanders, $7.1M 31. #Jets, $5.3M 32. #Chargers, $3.9M

bit.lyNFL 2022 Salary Cap TrackerA real-time look at the 2022 salary cap totals for each NFL team, including estimated cap space.

Fast-forward just two years and the Jets are sitting pretty with just $5.3 million of dead cap, the second-best number in football. How have the Jets managed this? In short, they don’t give our bad contracts, but it doesn’t mean they don’t spend…in fact, the Jets are right up against the cap this year and will need to do some maneuvering before the season starts. I’ve recently written about the contract philosophy of Joe Douglas and you can read that edition HERE.

The safety position concerns me, and while you absolutely have to trust the coaches who see these guys day in and day out, I can’t help but think the Jets may live to regret their decisions at the position this season.

Fortunately, we’ve managed to get Will Parks back on the practice squad, Will Parks is by no means a star, he wouldn’t be on the roster bubble in year seven if he were, but he’s the kind of player a franchise needs and he’s arguably been the most consistent safety through the off-season for the Jets, at least from what we’ve seen.

The Jets are heading into the season with the following:

Jordan Whitehead: A fine player who’s in his first year in the system.
LaMarcus Joyner: Missed 2021 and hasn’t played safety since 2018.
Ashtyn Davis: Ranked the 57th best safety in football and one of the five worst safeties against the run in 2021.
Tony Adams: UDFA rookie

There is having faith in the coaching staff and then there is that safety group. I hope I’m eating my words through the season but that is the weakest position group on the team by far and is also one of the weakest safety groups in the league, at least on paper.

The Jets struggled to defend the run last year for a number of reasons, the defensive tackles, the poor gap discipline from the linebackers, and the safeties. Jordan Whitehead has been brought in to help that but if Ashtyn Davis is playing meaningful minutes this year, he’s going to need to drastically improve his run defense ability. He may have only had a 12.9% missed tackle rate but he often took the worst angles to the ball carrier, opening up cutback lanes.

I’m intrigued to see more of Tony Adams, athletically he’s very impressive and he did well against the run in pre-season (73.4 PFF grade), but in coverage, he was targeted three times and allowed 3 receptions and a touchdown. That’s an incredibly small sample size and he was a good coverage safety at Illinois earning a coverage grade of 70+ in 5 straight seasons.

However, it’s his 81.7 PFF run defense grade in 2021 that grabbed my attention, part of that was him cutting his missed tackle rate down to 16.4% (It was 19.3% in 2020 and 22.4% in 2019), and from the little tape I’ve seen of him at Illinois, he has a ton of potential to develop.

We’ll see how this all shapes out and we’ll see if there is a move at the position coming down the track, for now, it’s a position of concern.

Finally, a small snippet on Denzel Mims. As we mentioned earlier this week, the Jets have absolutely no desire or motivation to move him for anything less than their valuation. You’re not going to find him being dealt for a 6th-round pick.

I know there were some reports floating around that the Jets were looking for a 4th round pick for him, but I’ve heard that the Jets won’t settle for anything less than a 3rd, whether that’s a conditional 4th that turns into a 3rd, we’ll have to wait and see.

Denzel doesn’t want to leave the Jets because he doesn’t like NY, he wants to leave the Jets because he wants to play and from everything we’ve heard, he doesn’t think he’ll get that opportunity in New York. Although it’s worth repeating that he’s one Corey Davis injury away from getting serious run in this team and Davis’s contract runs out of guarantees next year…worth monitoring.

Have a great weekend everyone. Last weekend without football!