New York #Jets Roster Changes REACTION (BADLANDS)

New York #Jets Roster Changes REACTION (BADLANDS)

What’s up everybody? Welcome back to your favorite New York Jets subscription podcast, Badlands. I’m your host, Joe Caparoso, joined as always by Connor Rogers. Jets Dolphins week, Monday Night Football. Get excited, America. 0 and3 Jets going to the 0 and3 Dolphins. And Connor, we got a a lot of news to talk about. There’s just had enough like five transactions today. So, how you doing? How you feeling? And then we’re going to talk some news. Then we’re going to talk some Mushi. And then we’re going to talk some Jets Dolphins. How’s it going, pretty good. I mean, yeah, it’s been a very interesting week already. I’m very curious to get even more injury clarity through the actual reports of guys that were of course not put on IR and uh that goes from a lot of of the top end guys, right? It’s is Justin are they going to is Justin Fields out of protocol and is he going to start? I would think if he’s okay, they’re going to start him, but we’ll see. the uh S Gardner obviously keep an eye on him because now they’ve acquired a corner. There’s a lot of different movement, you know, obviously now they’re banged up at linebacker as well, so they’re playing a lot of roster gymnastics with with that position specifically. So, yeah, I’m pretty good. It’s it’s one of those things though where I it’s not a good feeling that if if they lose Monday, like you the season really is over, right? not over from a standpoint of we’ll we’ll still do all the podcasts and cover every step of the team, but from an actual can you talk yourself into just hanging around the fringe of an AFC. I I didn’t pick the Jets to make the wild card this year. That’s not even what I’m saying, but like can you actually mathematically be involved, right? Especially when you have one of the Chiefs of the Ravens is going to be one and three after next week as they play each other. Joe Burrow is out for the regular season. I mean, the Texans look awful. 0 and3 Ravens 1 and two. It’s a weird year so far. The AFC East, besides the Bills, is is flat out awful. Y So, it’s just one of those things where like I didn’t I picked the Jets to win seven games this year, but I really would have liked them to surprise me and win win win eight or nine, right? Like win eight or nine and be really interesting in November where we’re gearing up for a game. So, it’s it’s not over yet. I’m not saying it is, but that’s why Monday it feels high stakes. And I don’t think just because it’s a prime time Monday night game, it feels like if you actually are showing progress, you beat a Miami team that kind of feels like they’re almost out of bullets here. I I mean, I understand they they fought against Buffalo, but they still lost. The coach is hanging on by a thread there. There’s a lot of problems over there, but I the Jets aren’t favored in this game, by the way. So, here we go. Miami two and a half. I I’ll save a little more for this for the end of the pod, but I I don’t say this often. They have to win this game. And I just think you have to win this game. You have to win this game. And I’m not saying the Jets are better than Miami and every it’s like definitive, but for where these two teams are at right now, you got to win this game. And I think like what you said, you lose this game, we’re talking probably about a four or five win team. You win this game, we can still talk about maybe being a seven- win team. when you look at the next five that are upcoming after it, really the next six because that includes the Pats, like it’s a soft ass stretch of the schedule. And I know the Jets are circled as a win on everyone’s schedule. But listen, I’d rather be playing the Panthers and the Bengals without Burrow and the Pats than playing the Bucks and the Bills and Mike Tomlin and the Steelers even. So, we’re going to get we’re going to get into that. God damn, they do have to win and I can’t lose another prime time game. I’ve seen so many prime time losses my brain can’t take it anymore. transaction division games. Yes. Yes. You have to beat the other bad teams in your division. The Dolphins are bad and the Pats are bad. Bills are great. The other two teams stink. You got to find a way to beat them for So today we get another trade out of nowhere. So we get a quarterback Jarvis Brownley Jr. Very similar to the Briggs and Harrison Phillip trades. Late round pick swaps. This is a young guy. Briggs young. Phillips relatively young guys that are cost controlled than you’re going to have here for multiple years. cornerback in his second year who, you know, from my early perusing, Titan fans seemed furious that they traded away. A guy who very physical, very good against the run, very feisty, bit of an for us talking about the energy the team needs, struggles with penalties, and just interesting with the position because we were talking before we got on air and you could go three different ways with this. I also flagged that he was banged up last week and didn’t play and I don’t know if he’s going to be ready to play this week. I think he might be out for a week or two. He was in a boot last week. Yeah. So it could even be it could even be longer than that. It it’s is S Gardner a little banged up? Are you worried about that? Are you coming to reality with how bad Brandon Stevens is at outside corner and thinking like, “Oh maybe we do have to try him at safety or in the slot or just something different with him or this is a guy who’s played a little slot at different times in his college career. Are we not sure on Michael Carter if he’s a long-term building block here because we didn’t pay him?” It could be a mix of all three. And this could very much be the Jets saying, you know what, it’s year one, maybe it’s year zero, depending on the conversation with Woody. And we’re just gonna throw a lot of against the wall and see who sticks and who doesn’t stick. And the price is little. And these are all effectively like day three draft picks. And you know, if we go back and we reset it and we just sign Briggs and we sign Phillips and we traded for this guy and you kind of swap out some of the other lower tier moves we made of, you know, Nandi and Coward and Tele and some of the other things like it it’s all come going to come out in the wash because we’re going to use this year to evaluate them before we get into the player and talk about some of the stuff at linebacker because there’s unfortunately a lot of news there. I feel like, and I’m not going into conspiracy theory mode, but just from a distance, I feel like something happened at a certain point in the Jets off season, like nine weeks ago that someone different got in Muji’s ear or there was some level of turnover in the scouting department who had voices because there was like the first half of the off season, which had the Stevens contract, this like headscratching day three, which we’re going to continue to harp on over and over again, all the defensive tackles I just named, none of whom are a factor or even on the team anymore this year. And then all of a sudden, you have three trades in five weeks and all kind of similar trades where it’s not like the Jets went and traded for like uh a 31-year-old starting receiver to plug in the lineup. They traded like middle of the roster guys to come in and compete. And it’s almost like someone like I don’t even know if these moves are all going to prove to be great. Although Phillips and Briggs have looked good so far. We’ll see about Brownley and you could talk a little bit more about who that player is from when you scouted him. I just feel like someone else got in Muji’s ear and and I I just don’t know what it is, but it feels like something flipped. Do you sense that at all? Because it’s weird for a team, certainly for the Jets, to make this many trades structured this way in a short period of time. I agree. I I I definitely agree. It does feel like I don’t know if philosophy switched because teams aren’t typically teams trade players, you know, throughout the draft season, end of the summer, but and you you see more trades during cuts because look at the Browns. Like I I watched the Browns tape this week, by the way, one of the best defenses in the NFL and just beat Green Bay. They were a four and a half win team before the year. And I when I watched him, I was like, “Oh, now I know why they traded they gave Joan Briggs to the Jets.” and Jawan Briggs has been really nice acquisition for the Jets in his rotational role. The Browns have like eight defensive tackles that are absolute killers. They’re just so loaded there. That’s why trades like that happen. It’s like, hey, our position group, we really like it. Instead of just cutting a guy, let’s try to get a late day three pick or a pick swap for him and move on in in that kind of way. And that’s that’s good work by the Jets capitalizing on a team that has excess at a position. And then Harrison Phillips was more of the Vikings were clearing his cap space and they felt like they could survive without him and the Jets have desperately desperately needed a run stopping nose tackle and that’s exactly what he’s been. Brownley is one that nobody can really figure out, right? Because this is someone that when I So my first taste of of scouting him was when he got to the Senior Bowl and he he looked really good at the Senior Bowl. played over 200 snaps at both Louisville and Florida State. So, he played a lot of college football, but he was just so feisty and competitive and physical and I know part I haven’t followed his NFL career closely as people that follow the Titans and cover the Titans, but it do it does seem like penalties have been an issue. He gets grabby, but he’s been a good young player for that team overall and he is highly competitive and highly physical against the run. I I have a lot of working theories with this one. Let’s go back to big picture before we talk about just the cornerback room. Number one, I said it from the jump and I hate that I feel very correct about it. The Jets, I mean, fell on their face on day three of the draft this year. And yeah, I get it. I wouldn’t want to be judged from my rankings after three weeks of an NFL season. And I like to be given at least 3 years or two years, but there’s nothing that should improve your confidence of when they they’ve went so far away from consensus on almost every player they took on day three besides Malachi Moore, right? So, by the way, Malai Moore is going to be in the film review I’m doing. Um, you know, he has his rookie hiccups as well, but he also has some moments. Aaron Smith, not a not a typical fourth round prospect. They put Tyler Baron on the field. You were saying to me before we recorded like this guy doesn’t look like an NFL player. I didn’t think he was anything as a prospect. They are bringing in all these linebackers when they just took one in the fifth round. So, they have no interest in playing him. Yeah. And they tells you everything you need to know. By the way, they traded up for some of these guys. Like, they use real draft capital to get some of these guys. So, it’s not just that they overdrafted certain players, but they just maybe Joe, they actually realized the mistakes they made at one not addressing defensive tackle at all besides washed up free agents on minimum contracts and that’s why they made those moves. And then two, corner is kind of a weird one, right? Because you’re sitting there and you’re like, we still haven’t acquired a receiver. We There’s plenty of other positions we felt like we needed depth at more than this. Honestly, I thought this team needed a third tight end for the line of scrimmage. Yep. And and Rooker, while he’s made steps this year, is still a bad blocker. He’s not a good enough blocker. That’s been a problem, but they didn’t acquire a guy like that. With Brownley, I I look a little deeper into this one. I just wonder what even if this isn’t the type of move you make if Saus is missing a game. You know what I mean? You don’t I wonder number one, I think they got good value here. I think Brownley is better than a sixth and seventh round pick swap. He is. Unless there’s things that like we just don’t know. And I know he’s a little banged up right now, but it’s not like he has a torn ACL. He has played better than that value. That’s odd. And I know a lot of people that cover Tennessee or fans of Tennessee are very disappointed at that return and didn’t expect them to be traded. I think number two, this is a regime frontlined by Aaron Glenn that has been feeling out what he has in the building. Yeah. And I think he’s bringing in guys that more are more in lock step with him and eventually weeding out guys from the previous regime. And I think he’s he he needs more than one free agency to do that. But now they’re trying to do the like, hey, day three picks, especially sixth and seventh rounders, they have a very low hit rate. Let’s get something we know what it is, who they are instead, and then we’ll try to draft rounds one through four or one through five. Like Brownley most likely is going to be a better NFL corner than anybody you take at quarterback in the sixth or seventh round next year. There’s always a chance, but I’m talking about running the actual odds. If you ran every sixth and seventh rounder taken over the last 25 years who had an NFL career beyond two years, anything like that. So that’s that’s the line of thinking with that. But really the third thing is you just kind of wonder if they just don’t like the room they have right now. They clearly didn’t like their interior defensive line room if they added two guys and they shouldn’t have. It wasn’t any good besides Quinnon. The quarter room though you’ve so you paid Sauce as the top corner. Okay. You paid Stevens as a very high-end number two. That was you. The previous regime paid Michael Carter. I don’t think this regime and coaching staff likes small corners. We like Michael Carter on this show. He’s a great NFL story. He’s a very smart player. I actually honestly think the Jets are so pathetic at safety. I actually think he could help them at safety right now, but that I don’t think they’re going to do that. I am leaning where I’m like I’d be surprised if Michael Carter is is not a cap casualty after this year. As much as it pains us to say, I I feel somewhat unfortunately confident in that. I just don’t think they’re invested in him. They might realize that Stevens is bad and they already need to get ahead of that. So, they might look at this and go, “Well, if Stevens can’t play, we’re going to move on from Carter. Maybe next year we’re looking at Brownley in the slot and and Thomas and Sauce on the outside.” And the value added up for us right now. He’s he’s a Glen kind of corner. Like, he likes to tackle. He’s physical. He’s grabby, but he is physical in man coverage. So this to me on like the Dline one was like we kind of want to shake things up and maybe even send a message right now. Yeah. I mean I think at a minimum that transaction is a shot across the boat to a guy like Stevens coming off a really bad game where he allowed another touchdown he couldn’t tackle. And I I don’t disagree about Carter who’s also just been a little banged up. And I I could see both him and Quincy again being these previous regime type players who just aren’t here next year. It doesn’t mean they’re not going to go somewhere else and be productive NFL players, but that kind of lineup that you mapped out, that would make a little more sense. We know Chris Harris coached them previously, so there’s a history with the player and I’m sure he advocated going to get him. We know they’re go, we know we’re going to see Thomas sooner rather than later. He already played and he held up all right in a small sample size and there’s too many measurables and that was potentially too good of a pick of too good of value to keep him on the sideline. And I’m sure in the Jets mind now they’re starting to say our corners for the next few years are probably going to be Saw and Thomas. How do we round that room out and have some more depth? Because even from a depth perspective, you know, we like stickers, but we don’t know if they view him as a safety or a corner. And again, he’s not someone that they drafted. So you have to always remember that last part. Yes. It’s like, so we turned over the D line room. Now it’s like we want to make it our cornerback room for better or worse. Yeah, you have to remember with new regimes, I I have been fortunate enough to sit down with somebody after they got hired in a higherend executive role and just pick their brain on on what it’s like acquiring a roster that wasn’t theirs. That was bad. It was really bad. And I remember we sat there over quite a few beers, like this was a long conversation. and they they are like are so picky when they get there because you don’t want to be you don’t want to ride it out with a player that wasn’t your choosing because like you don’t want to die on that sword. You’d rather die on your own sword and the real So think of every 5050 guy. If there’s a guy on the team where it’s like yeah he’s fine but we don’t think he’s as good as the money he makes. So, we’d move on. Like every 50/50 decision is punt the guy away. So, they try to turn over the roster as much as they can. The problem is too, this is a Jets team right now. Some of their own doing with the regime and some not that their resources are not great for a bad team. They’re not. They don’t have a third rounder this year because of the Hassan Reic trade. They traded next year’s fifth to go up and get Tyler Baron, which was their own doing. an idiotic stir trade like like an idiotic an idiotic trade. So now they’re trying to be creative by getting the thing is the Jets can’t suck next year, right? Like the Jets could People don’t want to hear this. The Jets can really be bad this year and I don’t think anything’s going to happen. I agree. Um right. Like that’s kind of like I I think the Jets could be pick like I don’t think the Jets are going to be picking one, two, or three. But if they are, I don’t really think anything would happen. But next year you can’t stink and you c now you so you need to accelerate your timeline. So I think the Jets are looking at it and going well a 2026 or 2020 day three pick is not going to give us anything. By the time they give us something we might be fired. So Brownley is already in year two of his development. And I told you he played over 200 snaps in college. So you feel better about where he is. You look at Briggs. Briggs is in year two. And Briggs is, you know, kind of know what he is now and he has some upside. Harrison Phillips, you can keep him for his money next year. You like you have Ro, you have contract control of him next year if you want it. So to me, I think they made a lot of mistakes this spring. I think it was a regime that was entirely in over their heads. I think they hired a GM that was not particularly ready to be an NFL GM, especially when you can’t bring all your people in in time where you’re making all these decisions. And now they’re trying to give themselves a little bit of insurance. So I respect the creativity. I do. You’d rather get it right the first time. But yeah, I think this is a scenario where going back to that combo with this person that I had, they are going to they are going to try to make this 53man roster look as different as they like. They told you what they think of Garrett Wilson. They told you what they think of Sauce Gardner. But what do they think of John Simpson? What do they think of Elijah Vera Tucker and his lack of health? What do they think of these guys? So yeah, that you’re the best part is you get all the answers over time. Yeah. Yeah. I think and for the people who just listen to this and they’re like, “Well, what about Michael Clemens because he just put out again the worst tape in NFL history.” My guess, cuz we don’t have to keep going down this road, is they thought very incorrectly that Tyler Baron could start to take that job from him as a backup to Germaine. We got Germaine, he’s ahead of schedule. He looked really good week one. You know, Germaine by the middle of the year is going to be playing 60 to 70% of the snaps. His top backup is going to be Tyler Baron, who we liked a lot as a specialist pass rusher. We traded up to get him and gradually we could phase Clemens out and just play him as like 12 snaps a game, run stopper, tough guy, whatever. Now, that was a very dumb line of thinking because of course Germaine is going to get banged up and you can’t count on that. And Clemens is not good enough to have that role. And now Baron can’t play. I said before we got on he looks like Dylan Donahghue without the DUI and I could just see that from not even scouting him like he just looks like he doesn’t belong and maybe he’ll the light will go on but him in the open field with Baker Mayfield was kind of like all I needed to see. I was like oh my god this guy I saw in the preseason too like when he rotated in you’re like this guy doesn’t look he looks like someone who’s not going to be on a regular season roster and he wouldn’t have been if he wasn’t a draft pick. I I respect them trying something with McGregor. McGregor can’t play. He’s not an NFL player either. So at this point it’s like do you try Watts? Do you try street free agent? Can you do one of these kind of trades for some team who is loaded at edge rusher and has a guy who’s not playing that much and could just do something. So right you could also counter and be like look like Rome wasn’t built in a day. One of the questions we’re going to have in war room is like guys remember what the Jets draft class was last year. It was Olu Fashionu Malachi Gorley who’s out of the NFL. The two running backs who are you know backup role players. Stickers who’s a backup role player, Jordan Travis and Jaylen Kei who are out of the NFL. That’s a hard thing to kind of inherit. That’s your secondyear class. So it could be like look like we’re going to fix DT and corner this year. Next year we’re going to go crazy on edge and safety and receiver. Maybe I’m trying to give him the benefit of the doubt. It’s only week four. What? Before we get to Miami talk, let’s say that for this we talked about Muji on the reaction pod and I think the criticism was very valid. I also think there’s been some weird like poking on guys like Olu and Will McDonald who I don’t think are anywhere near the problem on this team right now. No, let let me tell you, I I watched the seven pressures that Olu gave up and like you really you really and listen, I I my podcast is like supported by Pro Football Focus. So, I think if you’re getting any fair opinion here, it’s from me. I love PFF’s software, their data, the people that work there, everything about it. Once in a while, what I think is a pressure might not be what they think is a pressure. And when I went and watched Olu’s seven pressures, I didn’t come away with that he gave up seven pressures. I’m not saying he had a perfect game, but there’s a reason he gave up seven pressures and no quarterback hits. Yeah, it’s not like Tyrod Taylor’s Lamar Jackson right now. He can move, but So, yeah, I I Let’s of all the issues on this roster right now, a lot of issues with this team, the 22-year-old left tackle is not even in the top 15. I was going to say on my rewatch, I again left being like this offensive line was pretty good. And Angstram did not have a good game, but he was probably like 10% better than I thought he was. And I I was reminded that while we like Tyrod, like he is an old backup for a reason. And there were plenty of plays that he left on the field, which that’s that is what it is. And it gave me a little more of like let’s hope Fields is healthy and you can get him back. Now before we go fully Jets Miami with Muji

Joe and Connor discuss an active day of Jets transactions, including a trade for a new cornerback, a bigger picture look at the front office and their decision making trends more recently compared to early in the offseason and then close by previewing Jets vs. Dolphins…

FULL episode at www.patreon.com/BadlandsTOJ