Position Reset for ’25
Assembling an offensive line through the draft can be a painful process from the outside looking in as bigger-named skill players, edge rushers and ballhawks go flying off the big board in back-to-back years while your team is focused in Round 1 on tackle, guard or center.
But first-year head coach Aaron Glenn made his intentions clear from the start. As he said after the Jets draft that began with the seventh overall pick of Missouri T Armand Membou: “I’m a firm believer that you start it inside out, so if we can build our line, just as much as our defensive line also, that only helps you as a team. It helps your quarterback, it helps your running backs, it helps your passing game, and it just creates an identity within your team that you’re trying to make sure that every team, when they watch film, they see that.”
The Jets have tried different formulas for reconstituting their O-line from one season to the next, but real OL stability has been hard to come by since the end of the Nick {Mangold) and Brick (D[Brickashaw Ferguson) heyday that ended in 2015.
Now the line has twentysomething starters returning at four of five positions — Olu Fashanu (22), last year’s first-round pick, at LT, John Simpson (28 in August) at LG, Joe Tippmann (24) at C and Alijah Vera-Tucker (26) at RG — and with a spirited competition ahead for RT. Sixth-year pro Simpson, suddenly among the graybeards in the room, suggests with quiet confidence: “I think we can be one of the better groups in the NFL, and that says a lot.” AVT added about the Jets’ OL: “I think this is a great group.”