5 takeaways from Jets' offseason program - Newsday
Aaron Glenn doesn’t like to share many details regarding how the Jets intend to win games this season. His philosophies, the personality he wants from the team, how they’ll deploy most of their personnel, that information is locked away in vaults deep beneath One Jets Drive.
But there is one element of this operation that is just too obvious to try to shroud.
The goal for the offense this season, he admitted, will be to get the ball to Garrett Wilson as often as possible.
Throughout this spring that seems to have been the goal, too. And so far it is working. There are no MVPs of OTAs and minicamps, but if there were, Wilson would be the easy frontrunner for the honor. Just about every day he pops with another ridiculous catch, an uncoverable move, or just a stunning display of his abilities.
“He's making some catches now,” offensive coordinator Tanner Engstrand said this week, trying to catalog all of them. “He had one the other day, he had one last week. Clearly an elite athlete and we're looking forward to him continuing to get a hold and a grasp of this offense and take it to the next level.”
One of the reasons for Wilson’s standout performance has been quarterback Justin Fields, his old college teammate. Wilson’s game relies a lot on instinct and improvisation, finding tiny vulnerabilities in defenses and exploiting them. That didn’t sit well with some previous quarterbacks who tried to demand precision and exactness from his routes.
Now, though, Wilson gets to catch passes from someone who knows his game and can anticipate his unscripted moves.
“It’s someone I am familiar with, someone I have a great relationship with,” Wilson said of Fields. “Someone that I love just watching him play. Since I met Justin it’s been a pleasure to line up alongside of him . . . I didn’t think we’d get this opportunity on this level so it’s exciting. We’ve been picking up where we left off.”
“G has been my guy for a long time now, so I really feel like we haven't skipped a beat out on the practice field,” Fields said. “It's been great so far just being with him.”
There is still work to do. This offense won’t be all about Wilson vamping and Fields trying to keep up with his jazz riffs.
“There is a fine line to being overly instinctual, if you will, but being able to get to where he needs to be at the time that he needs to be there,” Engstrand said.
This spring has already shown, though, that the more the Jets let Wilson do his thing, the better he and they will probably be.
Wilson and Sauce Gardner came into the league together as first round draft picks in 2022 and the Jets seem intent on keeping them as a pair. Both are in the midst of negotiations for contract extensions as they enter their fourth season.
Both have spoken with each other about what it would mean to play together for the length of their careers.
“Since Day One, we always came in saying we have to push each other because we want to help this organization,” Gardner said. “New York is a big market. If you win in New York it’s big for your legacy individually and big for the organization. Fast-forward we are going into year four together . . . We’re like the building blocks of this organization. We’re the homegrown talent that AG talks about.”
The contracts haven’t become a distraction yet. Both Wilson and Gardner were participants in the well-attended practices that were mostly voluntary. The Jets would be foolish to let this matter linger much beyond the start of the upcoming season when the business elements could start to creep into the minds of either young cornerstone.
Another member of that 2022 draft class, Breece Hall, seems like he might not be part of the Jets’ long-term plan. While he received a phone call from Glenn this offseason that dispelled trade rumors and let him know that he would remain with the team this season, the last on his rookie deal, he’s gotten no assurances beyond that.
Add to that uncertainty the desire of the new coaching staff to utilize all three of their running backs — Hall, Braelon Allen and Isaiah Davis — in a way similar to how the Lions use Jahmyr Gibbs and David Montgomery, and Hall may not put up the kind of numbers that warrant a long-term commitment. Hall’s bellcow days appear to be over, at least as the roster is currently constructed.
There is certainly a chance Hall rebounds from last year and regains the kind of production that had him lined up to win Offensive Rookie of the Year before tearing his ACL in 2022. But if he is going to be part of a committee rather than its chairman — and if the team does invest in keeping Wilson and Gardner — then Hall could be running his final lap with the Jets this season.
The Jets' coaches and players were afforded a different view of their workouts these last few months thanks to the addition of a GoPro camera on the helmets of the quarterbacks. It provides them with an opportunity to break down all types of elements from their plays which were previously difficult to rewind and play back using traditional cameras from a distance.
“It’s awesome,” Engstrand said. “I can’t believe we didn’t do this before. It’s unbelievable. We can hear [the quarterback] call the play in the huddle, we can hear him at the line of scrimmage making his check. You can see his eyes, where he’s going and you can see him going through the progression. You can see everything from his vantage point.
“We also get some nice tidbits of commentary in, which is pretty fun to hear too.”
The idea isn’t new. The Lions, in fact, did something similar several years ago when Glenn and Engstrand were on staff there. But here with the Jets all four of the quarterbacks have been donning the extra equipment atop their heads since they arrived for the program. They’ll do it in training camp too.
The hope is it helps Fields with his decision-making. In his career he has had a disappointing completion percentage of 61.1 (the league average since he came into the NFL is 64.1) and there have been many plays where his decision to run — or not — has come into question. Now he and the coaches get to review his practices — and his thinking — from his perspective.
Engstrand said getting reps in practice will be the biggest tool for getting Fields to improve in those areas, but noted that the GoPros will help.
“Yes,” he said, “I think it’s an advantage for us.”
Just about every player who spoke with the media this spring mentioned a private conversation he had with the new coach. That’s part of Glenn’s approach, to have an open door with and get to know his men.
“I'm a firm believer in if you know the person, then you start to figure out what buttons to push to get them to do things a certain way, and if you just know them as a football player, you really don't understand that,” Glenn said. “I learned that from Coach [Bill] Parcells. He knew how to push my buttons because he knew me as a person first and foremost, which allowed him to be able to do that.”
Just about every one of those chats resulted in the same message from Glenn: To become more of a leader. Whether it was Gardner or Fields or Quincy Williams or Jamien Sherwood, there was a verbal nudge from Glenn to step forward and take more of a personal responsibility for the direction of the program they are trying to build . . . and build together.
Tom Rock began covering sports for Newsday in 1996 and became its NFL columnist in 2022. He previously was Newsday's Giants beat writer beginning in 2008.