For two seasons now we've watched the OL ruin the Jets offense. Honestly, the OL has failed our two youngest and best players in Garrett Wilson and Breece Hall. Much more so than Zach, this is the reason why we can't win. Zach is a separate issue that is now solved. So where do you go from here? We cannot continue to March the same walking injuries waiting to happen along the OL. I would do the following: 1) I would offer Becton another contract but only at second string money. If he gets more on the open market? Then let him walk. 2) CUT Duane Brown, Laken Tomlinson, and Billy Turner. All 3 of them are any past their prime and just need to go. 3) KEEP Connor McGovern. We have him at second string money and despite the recent knee cap, he's probably our most reliable player. Keep him because he can play Center and Guard. 4) Draft Olu Fashano. Make him our new LT and he plays from day one. 5) Draft a GUARD in the 3rd round. Not sure who would be available, but we must get another young, talented body along the interior. 6) Sign a big name RT in free agency. Maybe Jonah Williams? Will he be available? So now your OL for 2024 is as follows: Fashano, FA guard, Tippman, AVT, Williams or some other big name. Bottom line is Joe Douglas failed the New York Jets in the last offseason by neglecting the OL. He must redeem himself by being determined to fix the OL no what it takes. If I were him? I wouldn't draft a single defensive player in April. I'd go with all offense.....
Honestly for me this is a very sore subject. And not just now, but for the past few years I have been preaching about the O line, and especially this offseason after 39 year old Rodgers declared his intention to come to the Jets. OT in particular, because I felt we had no one at the position who can be counted on. You probably saw me arguing pretty heatedly with multiple posters around/during the draft time about not doing the pick swap, when GB had no choice but to accept the deal without it or take extra 110 mil on the wallet and CAP (impossible), and then drafting Broderick Jones at #13. We later found out JD didn't even rate Jones all that high. After we missed out on that many here wanted a small trade up in the 4th for Dawand Jones, a 2nd round talent who slipped. Wanted someone talented to shore up the OT. Nothing came except injury prone Billy Turner who sucked last year and injury prone lesser talented than Dawand older rookie Warren in a 4th round trade down (not trade up). The argument really was to trust JD, he knows what he is doing. Oh, and that Duane who stunk last year, got seriously injured and is now a year older, is awesome. My response always was that I hope JD knows what he is doing, because it certainly does not look like what he is doing makes sense, and Rodgers could get hurt. Fast forward to today. Rodgers indeed got hurt after Duane whiffed a block. Jets luck - sure, but not having protection didn't help. In all but two games the line stunk. Rated bottom 3 in he NFL for the entire year not by one but by two paid evaluation services: PFF and DVOA. Broderick and Dawand are playing well: https://steelersdepot.com/2023/11/broderick-jones-moves-into-top-slot-as-highest-graded-rookie-ot/ . Our best Oline player is Becton, who should not have been even counted on this year given his injury history, and even he is below average. JD fails to get help before the deadline when Ezra Cleveland was available. Ezra already played for Jax, who got him for a 6th round pick, and looked a lot better than our RGs did all year. So, the jury is out now. JD does not know what he is doing when it comes to OLine. My concern now is that while everything you are saying is reasonable, can we even trust JD to fix this? I mean this is the same exact spot he was in last few years, but especially last year. Will the absolute fiasco this year perhaps change his approach? I am not sure. If he got Ezra at the deadline, I would feel more confident. Instead he got some dude off the couch, who stunk last year. As if there were no lessons learned at all. I am just very concerned for OLine even this offseason with JD in charge, as there are actually even more holes to fill now.
I think we all agree we need to finally put some serious work into the o-line. (Okay many of us have realized this for years.) The problem in 2024 is we will be maneuvering and manipulating the cap all offseason with not a lot of room for the holes we have to fill. Becton - we all know he isn't that great but tackles are at a premium and the league thinks he is still a big ticket. He'll likely get decent money somewhere. I'd consider him gone. Brown - he costs us less than 5 million next year. Sadly he'll probably be kept as depth. Tomilson - he carries a 10 million dead cap. But he also has an 18 million cap hit in 2024 because he restructured. He is a carbuncle at this point. Save 8 million or kiss off 10 million and a body? Probably the latter but he is a body. AVT - will be in a contract year. Will probably insist he doesn't play tackle anymore. Going down 3 years in a row would hurt his next deal a lot. He is the only salvagable piece. McGovern is a UFA after the season. He wont be as cheap as he was this season. Nobody on our roster will be, we already went all in. Jonah Williams could be available but will likely get in excess of 15 million a year. I doubt we have the money to sign a top FA tackle next season without cutting someone like Mosley. Olu Fashano - the guy is mocked to go top 5. Will we pick that high, and if we do will we trade it? If we tank this season and do pick top 5, we'll be back to being a joke and nobody is going to want to come here, even with Rodgers. The offseason is going to have a lot of twists and turns, and most of them wont be pretty. Frankly I wouldn't expect us to be a serious contender next year.
I have always believed and still do that you win in the trenches.. as you posted many times. I am so disgusted with this regime who I thought was better then they are showing. HC can not control his players and the locker room... JD failure relative to the entire O, not just the OL. If I was the owner, and they presented the"plan" I would have told them that was unacceptible esp the OL ... But I ran business where performances matter esp. if you provided enough $/tools to ensure success... which Woody did (I am not absolving woody here but come on the dude spends to win). Looks like to me, he again picked the wrong folks.
The o-line isn't bad, but it's devasted by injuries. They may need to add a few o-line players next season due to retirements and free agency losses.
I’d rather have a healthy OLine. New Olines get hurt all the time. Healthy Olines make the playoffs. *Im also a big fan of some other big name. We tried to sign him last year but he got a better offer. This year, we should make him an offer he can’t refuse. Off-season plan: FA: Sign some other big name Trade: Picks for that established srar Or That guy for serious draft capital Draft: that playmaker the late round steal
Haven't they already put some serious work into the OL? 2 1s a 2nd, not what I call ignoring the OL, the majority of the problem, was a clueless Wilson, and now it's so decimated with injuries
OMG, guys, I'm so excited at the idea that the Jets could potential BOTH sign Some Other Big Name AND hire Experienced Head Coach With An Established Track Record. Like I won't even be able to recognize this team anymore.
It seems to me that JD has tried, but failed. That's a bit different from not trying at all and simply signing scrubs. Becton and AVT are both 1st rounders, and we traded up for AVT. We took Tippman this year, and he's signed some guys that seemed like good deals at the time, Tomlinson coming to mind immediately. I think when looking to REPLACE these guys when injured, there's not a lot of big swings. No big name free agents, no trades - just signing depth guys to fill the void. And that can definitely be frustrating - particularly when the entire line is hurt and most, if not all, are replaced with older guys or no name projects. The other aspect brought up by someone in this thread is Wilson and whether he has something to do with it (forget who, sorry). Well, logic tells you the he might. Zach's biggest issue is holding the ball too long because he didn't know what he's seeing half the time. When you're dealing with 1 extra second, which amounts to nearly 50% more time these guys have to be engaged, on average, per play, that's a lot of chance for injury. Throw in the unpredictability of a QB who until recently wasn't staying on script and the added strain that comes with that, and it's not surprising we're seeing injuries. Before the Zach truthers arm themselves with pitchforks, note that I am not pinning this entirely on Zach - just spitballing that he could be one of the factors in addition to luck, chance, the turf, and how injury prone a player is. I'll leave out the SOJ curse.
I have been bitching about the Jets OL ever since I have been on this forum which has been awhile. Perhaps one of the most important coaches on an NFL team is the OL coach. My Patriots have benefitted from Dante Scarnecchia until he retired several years ago. Look at the OL now! I would argue that Tom Brady would have never been the GOAT without him. Many folks seem to think the Jets will be a Super Bowl contending team when Aaron Rogers returns. I don't think so. I think the Jets need to find a better OL coach. Someone like Dante Scarnecchia who not only could coach them up and develop them, but he was bright enough to realize how to pair them also. Drafting 1st round guys is not enough, you need someone who can get them to work as a cohesive unit. For example, when was the last time the Jets Oline was able to deal with a blitz? Why the stupid NFL media cannot point out what I am stating just kills me. Look at the Dallas offense tonight when Prescott had time to throw. Can anyone tell me of any good offense today in the NFL that doesn't have a good offensive line? Duh
We are on the second OLine coach though in 3 years. The first seemed to have done a good job in SF. I do agree coaching is very important, but I am just not sure if this is indeed the problem for us specifically. It seemed like when we had AVT, Tipp, Laken, and Becton in at the same time the line looked a lot better. Before Tipp was inserted and after AVT left the line looked bad no matter who the other players are. I just think that aside from these 4 guys, everyone else stinks. And even these 4 are not all great, but at least they are not terrible, like everyone else. Maybe Carter Warren will be decent too, but at least so far that's what I have observed. You take one of the four out, particularly AVT, who is by far the best of the 4, and the line just crumbles with just 3 OK guys, and 2 terrible guys in it. Again I am not disagreeing coaching is important, but I am just not sure if this is the problem for us specifically given how low quality the OLine players we have are and when we had 4 best guys all healthy and playing it looked significantly better.
We still have all our picks aside from #2. Actually, no #7 and #5, but two #4s, which is even better. There is still free agency. Seattle rebuilt their tackles in one year with two rookies #1 and #3 picks. Plus there is free agency. It can be done without drastic moves like giving up Huff and Sauce (Lawson is untradeable and will be gone regardless). I am just not convinced JD can do it, but giving away some of the best players at premium position on defense IMO is not a way to go.
Maybe JD stops bargain hunting at Dollar General or the NFL Retirement home for OLine talent someday??
At this point I am skeptical of what Joe would do on the Oline with 2 high profile FA, a 1st rd and 3rd rd pick. We could easily come out of it with 1 starter, 1 shitty backup and 2 guys that never see the field after a few games.
Is he really bargain hunting though? Becton was the 11th pick AVT was the 13th pick Tippman was a top 50 pick Laken got a massive contract He is spending resources at the OL. I would be shocked if they don't use another premium pick on the OL and run it back next year with something like this: Rookie or Becton Laken Tippman AVT/FA? Rookie or AVT
The thing is, when you spend resources on players, which then fail, you need to essentially forget that you spent these resources and reassess the situation freshly, regardless of how much you already invested. Take the DLine for instance. We did not spend much resources on Huff, but he was really good. That means when you make your assessment of needs, it doesn't really matter that you spent peanuts on him, what matters is that you have a solid player. Similarly, he may have spent #11 overall on Becton, but given Becton's injury history and not playing last two years, it seems to reason that you do need another starting level OT with Becton being more of a bonus at this point - meaning if he can produce great, but don't count on it. Hence even though previously high resources were invested, he had to invest again to try to get starting OT in the draft. Particularly after FA target Orlando Brown chose the Bengals. Duane Brown was even a bigger mistake. JD actually spent 10 mil on him THIS YEAR. Duane didn't have a guaranteed deal and JD could have easily cut him and save 10 mil. JD went after Orlando, but when that didn't happen, just decided to invest 10 mil in Duane. That was a big mistake. We all know what happened on Duane's 4th snap this season and how bad he was his entire 2 game stint before he got hurt again. So, overall it is not fair to say JD is only bargain hunting for OLine. But what I do see is that JD evaluates poorly when he needs an investment, and when he decides to invest, he allocates that investment poorly as well. Not all the time (Tipp was a solid pick as CMG had slipped towards the end of last year) but a lot of times. Had JD realized how bad of a need tackle was instead of counting on Duane, he could not have done a pick swap and would have drafted Broderick. Then when Dawand slipped to 4th (we didn't have a 3d) his eyes would have lit up and he would have spent a little more capital to get him also: doesn't take much to move up slightly in the 4th. Instead he settled for inferior talent at OT due to poor evaluation of a need and then poor investments when he did invest. Not a great combination.
I think you're overreacting a little here. You seem to forget JD is the architect of this entire team. When he got here we had NO ONE. The cupboards were bare. Infinitely worse, Mac didn't give a shit about OL. He personally drafted or acquired EVERYONE on our OL as of this moment and injuries are something no one can predict with ant degree of accuracy.
