We did a deep dive last week into some individual goals the Jets' offensive players could be in line to achieve in the season just ahead. Today it's the defense's turn, and with either a Pro Bowler or an All-Pro or both at each level of the D, there are a number of plateaus the members of this unit could scale in 2025 under first-year HC Aaron Glenn and his staff.
Quinnen Williams: Inside Force
Williams is the total package on the inside of the DL. As a pass-rusher, no doubt he would like to challenge his career highs of 12 sacks, 2 strip sacks and 28 QB hits, all in '22. If he should reach 11 sacks, he'd be at 50 in his seventh Jets season and would move past Calvin Pace and into fifth place on the Jets' all-time sack list (since individual defensive sacks became official in '82). For his career, Q needs one sack to get to 40 and 2 QB hits to reach 100.
Williams has also repped the Jets at the past three Pro Bowl Games, and a fourth consecutive all-star trip would put him in elite company — the last Jets defenders to go to four Pro Bowls in a row were C Nick Mangold and CB Darrelle Revis, both after the 2008-11 seasons, and the only Jets front-seven player to go to four straight Pro Bowls since 1970 was DE Mark Gastineau, who made it to five in a row from 1981-85. (Joe Klecko went to four of those five PBs in that span.)
McDonald: Relentless
Will McDonald IV led the Green & White with 10.5 sacks last year. Another 10-plus this season and he would be the first Jet with back-to-back double-digit sack seasons in more than 20 years, or since Shaun Ellis in 2003 (12.5) and '04 (11). John Abraham also turned that trick in 2001 (13) and '02 (10).
Harrison Phillips: Big Brick Wall
One of the newest veteran members of the D-line, Phillips comes in as a proven commodity against opponents' inside running games. One measure of that was his 92 tackles for Minnesota in 2023 — the fourth-highest tackle total by any NFL D-lineman in the past 25 seasons.
And he seems to make entire units better. He was a member of the Bills' No. 1 overall defense in 2021, then moved to the Vikings, whose NFL run D ranking each season he was there (starting 17 games all three seasons) went from 20th to eighth to second. The Jets have never ranked higher than No. 2 since 1970 in rush yards allowed/game, and the last time they came in first in yards allowed/carry was in 2013 with a 3.35-yard average. Phillips and the Jets would love to achieve either distinction if not both in '25.