Professional football is now a year-round enterprise, and that continues to be the case even after free agency and the draft are done, and the news cycle begins to die down in a relative sense. Now that April turns to May, it's time for NFL teams to begin their offseason workouts - to get the rookies in the building and see how everything starts to jell with veterans and free agent acquisitions.
For the most part, roster construction is what it is at this point, and every NFL team still has questions in that depart. In this series, Athlon Sports endeavors to answer those questions, with an eye toward how close each team is to true contention … or where some teams are in their rebuilding process.
We continue with the New York Jets, a franchise that has been lost in the wilderness for a very long time. Over the last 10 seasons, the Jets are the NFL's losingest team, with a 49-116 record, and a .297 win percentage (The Giants are the second-least successful team over that time, with a 55-109 record, and a .336 win rate. So much for Gotham)! In that decade, the Jets have had five different head coaches, several different general managers, and enough wrong-headed quarterback decisions to make anybody's stomach turn.
The hope was that Aaron Glenn, who played cornerback for the team from 1994-2000, and gained a ton of respect as the Detroit Lions' defensive coordinator, would be able to inject some sort of winning formula into the equation. That didn't happen in 2025, as the Jets went 3-14, and their three wins were by a total of 11 points. But with an offseason to reload the roster, are these Jets with Glenn and general manager Darren Mougey ready to take any real steps forward?
Can Geno Smith be a sufficient quarterback placeholder?
Geno Smith was originally selected by the Jets in the second round of the 2013 draft out of West Virginia, and as has been the case with most quarterbacks selected by this franchise over the last half-century, things did not go well. Smith ultimately found the peak of his redemption arc with the Seattle Seahawks in 2022-2024, before falling back to earth last season in a Las Vegas Raiders offense that couldn't bust a grape.
In 2025, Smith completed 302 of 448 passes for 3,025 yards, 19 touchdowns, 17 interceptions, and a passer rating of 84.7 - his lowest since he was a backup with the Los Angeles Chargers in 2018. That didn't stop the Jets, who tried to make it work with Justin Fields, Tyrod Taylor, and Brady Cook last season, from signing Smith to a one-year, $3.3 million deal just to paste it over until the new alleged franchise quarterback comes around in the 2027 draft.
With a better offensive line and better receivers than he had in Vegas, Smith is excited to give it one more go in his 13th NFL season.
"I'm extremely confident, but not arrogant," Smith said in March, when asked how much he has left in the tank. "I know there's a lot of hard work that needs to be done. I'm a lot better then I was those years. Statistics will always be a funny thing, but the reality is, like I said, the experiences I've gained, even last season, has made me a better quarterback. I've learned a lot and seen a lot, and you know, I'm pushing myself every single day in training to be a better player, and I believe I still have room to grow. I believe I still have a ton of years left on my body to play this game, and I want to continue to try and maximize it.
"So, I believe the Jets are getting a better player than I was in Seattle. I know that for a fact. I just want to go out there and exhibit that and be that player on a daily basis, and be consistent, and just put our team in the best position to win games."
geno still got that deep ball, shoot dang pic.twitter.com/x4S4FPAtaE
— Doug Farrar (@NFL_DougFarrar) May 5, 2026
Smith can still run an offense, he can still make throws to all areas of the field (as we have shown, the deep ball is still a thing of beauty), so perhaps he can lift the passing game to league-average with the talent around him.
Can anybody on this defense take the ball away?
It doesn't exactly help your winning percentage when your defense can't take the ball away, and that certainly was a Jets problem in 2025. That defense caused the fewest takeaways in a pro football season since at least 1940. All four of their takeaways were forced fumbles. Yes, as astonishing as it would seem in a 17-game season, Glenn's defense didn't have a single interception.
So, time to address that in both free agency and the draft. Step 1 was to sign former Chicago Bears star cornerback Nahshon Wright to a one-year, $3.5 million contract, which is a pretty nice deal for a guy who had five interceptions and seven pass breakups last season. Wright is a defensive energizer, and if Glenn and his staff can get the wavy parts of his game under control (he also allowed eight touchdowns in 2025), that could be a major piece of the puzzle solved.
Nahshon Wright is 6'4", 190. Jordan Addison is 5'11", 175. This was not the best way to set up a backdoor fade for the Vikings. pic.twitter.com/9FDAFGwGRp
— Doug Farrar (@NFL_DougFarrar) November 18, 2025
In the draft, the Jets took Indiana cornerback D'Angelo Ponds with the 50th overall pick in the second round. This could be another major bargain under the right circumstances, because if the 5-foot-8 5/8, 182-pound Ponds was two inches taller, he would have been an obvious first-round pick. Glenn, who was 5-foot-9 and 180 pounds back his playing days, would be forgiven if he saw a lot of himself in Ponds, who allowed 32 catches on 64 targets for the national champs for 379 yards, 56 yards after the catch, no touchdowns, two interceptions, and an opponent passer rating of 55.4.
I've been watching D'Angelo Ponds play outside for a while now, and I've yet to see a trend of bigger receivers boxing him out. When you're 5' 8⅝" and 182 pounds, you'd better have a hell of a vertical (43½"; 98th percentile), and play like a damn dawg. Ponds qualifies. pic.twitter.com/4693uKxiEO
— Doug Farrar (@NFL_DougFarrar) March 14, 2026
"D'Angelo is his own man, and he's a guy that we love," Glenn said after the pick was made. "Man, the traits speak for themselves, when it comes to height, weight, and all that. But then again, you look at the physical characteristics of the player, and that just overcomes a lot of the traits that he has as far as his height and all that. So, love the player; tough, aggressive, comes from a winning program. That's been something that's been constant about what we've been doing. He's a damn good player."
Glenn still needs more damn good players in his ultimate secondary, but maybe the new guys (add veteran safety Minkah Fitzpatrick to the group) could at least take the ball away. Like, more than zero times in an entire season.
So, the Jets nailed the offseason. Now what... or so what?
You would think that having three picks in the first round of any draft would be a lead-pipe lock for NFL success, but the 2026 Jets, who had the second, 16th, and 30th overall picks in 2026, are swimming upstream in a trend sense. The 2020 Miami Dolphins, the last team with three first-rounders, took quarterback Tua Tagovailoa, offensive tackle Austin Jackson, and defensive back Noah Igbinoghene. Only Jackson is still with the team, and his effectiveness has been limited by injury throughout his career.
On and on it goes. For every trifecta that turned out to be a major haul in a talent sense, there are several more that didn't pan out. So. while there are no guarantees that this group of prospects will turn the Jets around, the tape favors the process.
Second-overall pick David Bailey from Texas Tech had 15 sacks and 81 total pressures last season, and the 6-foot-4, 251-pound Bailey is especially adept at getting to the quarterback before the quarterback can even hit his first read.
David Bailey last season on quarterback drops of 0-3 steps: Three solo sacks, 12 quarterback hits, and nine quarterback hurries.
He's pretty fast, really. pic.twitter.com/eWQI1eSDRR
— Doug Farrar (@NFL_DougFarrar) February 17, 2026
16th overall pick Kenyon Sadiq from Oregon was this draft's TE1 from a true weapon perspective, and he'll add a ton to offensive coordinator Frank Reich's passing game.
The interesting thing about Kenyon Sadiq's ridiculous 10/40 times is that you didn't see them on tape as much as you might expect. He was more of a ball-tracker and intermediate guy getting things done. Makes me think that his NFL team will have vertical plans for him. pic.twitter.com/IkqdCzqRkS
— Doug Farrar (@NFL_DougFarrar) March 1, 2026
Finally, the addition of Indiana's Omar Cooper Jr. with the 30th overall pick gives the Jets, Reich, and Geno Smith an inside/outside target who can be both explosive and reliable.
Is Omar Cooper Jr. a first-round prospect despite the fact that he's mostly a slot receiver? Go review the way NFL passing games work these days, and the answer is a definitive "Yes." pic.twitter.com/CSjW29PhJD
— Doug Farrar (@NFL_DougFarrar) February 17, 2026
The good news, we suppose, is that even if the Jets find the 2026 first-rounders disappointing, they've also got three bites at the apple in the first round of the 2027 draft.
"We want to be process-oriented, meaning we did not want to miss a step," Glenn said post-draft of the overall offseason plan. "We know exactly what we were seeing, we know exactly what the vision was, and all of the steps in between that to actually get to that vision, and we're not done yet. We wanted to make sure that we were very intentional about those things, so it started with the coaching staff. And then we got into free agency, which we were all happy about, and then with the draft, which we were happy about.
"Now, we have to continue to go through OTAs and be intentional about those things, to make sure that we get better as a football team and as an organization. So, I'm happy with where we're at. We've grown, but we still have a ways to go, and we're going to do everything we can to make sure we get there."
As they say, there's nowhere to go but up.
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