The Corley Test

Edition #888: The second year man has a mountain to climb and due to injury, he's not even reached base camp.

☀️ Good morning ☕

I’ll be honest and say my work schedule is kicking my ass at the moment. I’m writing this around 11pm Sunday night, 15 minutes after finishing the Real Madrid game and I’ll be working again at 2am for the Manchester City game, so if there is an error or two in here, I apologise. I’ll make it up during the season with my focus on the NFL for both my full-time job and this old newsletter.

Someone asked me what C.J Mosley’s legacy would be with the New York Jets and it’s a question I struggled to answer. Was he a good player? Yes. What he a good leader? Yes. Was he a good captain? Yes. The Jets had several years where they were among the elite on the defensive side of the ball, but he never made a post-season appearance for the Jets, the Jets never had a winning season with Mosley in the building.

Mosley’s first season was 2019 and the Jets went 32-68 across the 6 seasons Mosley was a jet. Of course the worst season (2020) when the Jets won just 2 games also happened to be the season Mosley sat out due to COVID. But when you leave with that W/L legacy, I’m not sure how much of a legacy you leave behind. It’s certainly an interesting debate.

We’ll keep it nice and short today because the internet is full of people concocting trade suggestions and being overreacting to every single piece of information that surfaces.

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Around the New York Jets 🟩⬜

• Quinnen Williams is a player looking to bounce back from a down year and this is what PFF had to say about it: “Williams’ production dipped last season, particularly in the run game, where he finished the year with a career-low 57.5 PFF run-defense grade. He was still an impact player as a pass rusher (76.1) and placed 28th out of 118 qualifying interior defenders in PFF grade (69.6). Williams earned elite PFF overall grades in both 2022 and 2023, ranking fourth among interior defenders over that span (91.5). Despite the down year in 2024 (by his standards), he still ranks fourth among active interior defenders in PFF WAR (0.87) over the past three years.”

• You’ve probably all seen this by now, but Tom Brady was at Fanatics Fest (Whatever that is) and stomped and spat on a Sauce Gardner Jets jersey. I’ve never liked Brady but I’ve always largely respected him believing the constant cheating in New England came from above his head, but spitting on a jersey, disrespecting one of your peers, a young guy who by all accounts does everything right? That’s not the one for me. Brady once said that post Belichick he was finding his voice, and all that’s doing is proving from an absolute ass he is.

• Mark Sanchez has been defending Aaron Rodger’s season last year: “The last 10 games, he was on a heater. He single-handedly basically kept their playoff hopes alive,” Sanchez said on the Dan Patrick Show. “[The Jets] lost about three games to special teams alone — just field-goal kicking alone.” I always liked Sanchez but this is why you can’t evaluate a situation from a stat sheet. Rodgers stats were outstanding for a Jets QB, but all the baggage, all the friends, all the lopsided offensive schemes and the mid-game misses. It never felt as though Aaron Rodgers was “on a heater” to me.

• Sticking with Aaron Rodgers for a second, apparently he was not a huge fan of the running game in New York last season, a running game that would have been largely concocted by Keith Carter and his old friend Nathaniel Hackett. “Aaron and I had a conversation about, when he was with the Jets, how abysmal their running game was and how schematically it made no sense,” NFL on Fox analyst Mark Schlereth said recently on his “The Stinkin Truth” podcast, according to SteelersNow.com. “I started the conversation, and then Aaron went on for about a 25-minute diatribe on their run game.”

• Mason Taylor made a few notable plays in camp and there is building excitement around his potential. Rob Rang has even compared him to Mickey Shuler, a name well known around these parts: "New York Jets: TE Mason Taylor — Mickey Shuler," Rang said. "Perhaps some of the reason why the Jets have struggled developing a young quarterback in recent years is their lack of a "security blanket" at tight end. Taylor has some of the surest hands of any pass-catcher in this class, providing an immediate boost to a franchise that hasn’t produced a Pro Bowler at TE since Mickey Shuler … in 1988."

• Darren Mougey has been speaking with Sauce Gardner’s representation for a while now and there is hope within 1JD that the first-time GM can secure the extensions of both Sauce and Garrett Wilson before the season starts. Sauce was recently asked about the extension situation and all he said was “Real Soon” giving everyone a jolt of confidence that not only are we about to tie down one of the best corners in the game, but that Darren Mougey is someone who goes through with his outlined strategy.

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While it doesn’t look good. It’s far too early to start throwing the bust label at Malachi Corley as he gets ready to enter his second year in the league.

Rich Cimini wrote a piece on Malachi Corley recently which sent a few reverberations around the internet prompting headlines such as “All-time Joe Douglas bust might not even make Jets final roster” [Fansided], yet the headline that the original author wrote was far less sensational: “Jets WR Malachi Corley has lots to prove in second year”[ESPN].

In the piece that Cimini wrote which I thought was very good, he merely states: “A lot has changed in 14 months. Rodgers, Douglas and Saleh are gone; Corley could be, too, if he doesn't alter his career trajectory.” pointing to two facts that can’t really be disputed. Corley suffered through a very difficult first year in the league and there is a different coaching staff that has no ties to him.

Unfortunately his second season is yet to get going. He’s missed the vast majority of the off-season program due to an undisclosed injury. That hurts when you’re installing a new offence, it hurts even more when you are coming off a rookie campaign where you have more bonehead mistakes than touchdowns (dropping the ball short of the goal-line on Halloween).

Glenn has said all the right things: "Here's what I remember from Corley: His ability to get the ball in his hands and make something happen," Glenn said. "When you have a player like that, the first thing you think about is screens, you think about punt return, kick return. You think about things like that. There's a plan for him, and we're going to make sure that we try to utilize him to what he can do best, and we've seen that in college. Hopefully, he gets well soon, and we get a chance to utilize his skill set."

Establishing himself in the return game could be the key to his success, or at least the key to him sticking. Last season he didn’t play special teams, it was part of the reason he was a healthy scratch for 5 games. We heard it at the time but it’s now been confirmed by Cimini, another issue was the perceived maturity: “His maturity also came under scrutiny, with some in the organization privately questioning his approach, according to people with knowledge of the situation.”

He’s in a crowded field this year and Xavier Gipson and Jamaal Pritchett both work on specials. It makes sense to try and get the ball in Corley’s hands, he racked up 2,068 YAC from 2021 to 2023, significantly more than the next division one guy. He had back to back years with 11 touchdowns, he had 55 missed tackles forced over his final two years, and while his route tree was never overly diverse, his ability with the ball in his hands was never questioned.

The Jets coaching staff and Aaron Rodgers obviously didn’t trust him last year. It’s why he appeared in less than 90 offensive snaps and received 6 targets all season. He didn’t receive a single target between weeks 3-7 and only 3 targets over the teams first 10 games. He never received more than 2 targets in a single game and his single game yardage record was 10 yards (week 11 against the Colts). So the bar couldn’t have been set any lower.

The problem for Corley is that he can only prove his credentials by getting on the field and that’s something that has obviously been noted.

"My old coach, Bill Parcells, used to say the first thing you need to be is you need to be available," receivers coach Shawn Jefferson said. "He's missed some time, and there's a learning curve here, so he's in catch-up mode right now."

"He's going to have to find a way to catch himself up," offensive coordinator Tanner Engstrand said last week.

It’s too early to call Corley a bust, he wouldn’t be the first player to struggle to adapt. But time is ticking on the Western Kentucky man.