Wednesday News & Notes

Edition #1117: Jets taking inspiration from Knicks success, putting NY Sports back on the map.

Good Morning ☕

I talked about this a little bit on Monday, but that Knicks championship should serve as inspiration for the Jets. Another team in desperate need of success after a sustained period of mediocrity.

There are plenty of similarities between the two situations, with prolonged championship droughts, long fallow periods, public, media and fan ridicule and an owner that was seen as meddlesome.

My piece on Monday was based around my thoughts on that Knicks championship win, but Jets players have been speaking about how the energy brought to the city is serving as motivation ahead of the 2026 season.

“I think that’s a special thing, to see the energy and just how devoted the fans are to the team and the city. It gives us a little bit of added motivation. We’re motivated already, but, man, just watching those guys win that championship, it has to do something for you as a competitor.” - Geno Smith

“I went to eat wings with Tyler the other day in the city -- we were watching UFC fights -- and I congratulated him and I’m like, ‘I can’t wait to have that feeling,’” Hall said. “So there’s definitely positive jealousy because I want my team to be able to do that as well. We're hungry. We're going to try to surprise everybody this year."- Said Breece Hall who’s friends with Tyler Kolek and Mikal Bridges.

“You’ve probably heard me say this before, but, man, competitive stamina -- that’s something that those men showed throughout that whole series and that’s a real thing. It's something that we're working on, and the way you do that is, me as a coach, I have to make sure I create that in practice. It's hard to do that in OTAs because the physical part of it, but once we come to training camp, you can bet your ass that we're going to work on competitive stamina, because those Knicks those guys showed it." - Aaron Glenn added

Talk is cheap but every destination starts with a journey.

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NEWS & NOTES 🗞️

• The Jets officially singed the 4th round pick Darnell Jackson JR meaning they have their entire draft class signed and sealed

  • “A big, physical man who’s going to help us up front,” said general manger Darren Mougey of Jackson. “He’s got knock-back, he plays hard, he’s an enormous, strong, physical man.”

• According to Aaron Glenn you can’t win a position battle in OTA’s but that doesn’t mean you can’t get certain aspects down:

  • “You just don’t win jobs when it comes to OTAs,” Glenn said. “But I would say this – the mental part of what we’re doing, I think our guys have done a really good job of that and when I say that I’m talking about schematically, of understanding exactly what we’re trying to do on offense, understanding exactly what we’re trying to do on defense. I thought special teams guys had a really good understanding of that already. And the thing is we’re steadily building on that. The mental part is where I wanted to make sure we made a huge jump because we knew it was new and our guys did a good job of that.”

• Glenn also spoke about the Jet signing of homegrown talent like Wilson, Tippmann and Hall:

  • “We want to keep our players – we want to keep our guys who are homegrown and we like good players too,” Glenn said “This is something me and (GM Darren Mougey) talked about in great length to make sure we reward the guys who want to be Jets, we reward the guys who act like Jets because that helps you turn your franchise around and we’re doing everything we can to make sure that happens. We have a ways to go – we understand that. But we understand there is a process about going to do things that we try to make sure we follow that process.”

• Geno Smith believes that there is a unity within the Jets locker room:

  • "What I see within this team is there's a unity here, there's a belief inside the building and I believe every single one of the coaches and players are working with this same intent and I think that's something that's very powerful," Smith said. "That unity, that intentionality that we have about our work, I think it breeds success and so we've got to just stay down and keep our heads down, stay focused on day-to-day and all the big things will happen."

• The Jets worked out former Ohio State CB Shaun Wade this week. The former 5th round pick who was drafted by the Ravens was traded 5 months after the draft and was most recently with the Dallas Renegades of the UFL. He had 6 interceptions in 3 years with Ohio State to go with 19 pass defenses, 5 tackles for a loss and 2 sacks.

• NFL.com ranked the Jets #4 on their list of teams ready to break their playoff drought:

  • “In the NFL, where parity rules supreme, it’s a statistical improbability for a team to go a decade and a half without making the playoffs, but don’t tell Gang Green the odds. The second year of the Aaron Glenn era provides New York a solid shot at breaking the streak, with established veteran additions like Geno Smith, Demario Davis and Minkah Fitzpatrick strengthening the roster, and stars Garrett Wilson and Breece Hall back in the fold. In the Jets’ way are the defending AFC champion Patriots and perennial postseason participant Bills in the East; that in-division competition is reflected in their .517 SOS (12th in NFL). The odds of New York snapping the streak this year aren’t high, but I like its chances better than that of some others. How the AFC’s mid-tier squads perform after an offseason of coaching turnover will affect whether there’s a runway for the Jets to land in the playoff race.”

• Jowon Briggs made it onto PFF’s all seventh round team entering the 2026 season. A selection made up entirely of players selected in the 7th round:

  • “Briggs is less heralded with just 721 career snaps across time with the Browns in 2024 and Jets in 2025, two teams that both went 3-14. But the 24-year-old has shown major promise. His 85.6 PFF pass-rushing grade from last season led the Jets by more than 14 grading points. Briggs’ 12.7% pressure rate was also among the top in the league for interior rushers, rubbing shoulders with the likes of Quinnen Williams and Chris Jones.”