estimated to carry a cap hit<\/a> just over $14.4 million for the 2027 season. With a price tag like that, it’s a pretty easy decision for New York to make. McDonald is the Jets’ best pass rusher. <\/p>\nIn 2025, McDonald racked up eight sacks for the Jets in 15 games played. The next closest to McDonald was Jowon Briggs with four sacks. In 2024, McDonald racked up 10 1\/2 sacks in 17 games played. He’s going to turn 27 years old in June. With the price tag of elite pass rushers consistently in the $25-plus million per year range, including a few over $30 million and $40 million, keeping someone with the upside of racking up double-digit sacks with a salary cap hit just over $14 million is a no-brainer. <\/p>\n
The Jets need to bolster the edge even more this offseason and the upcoming 2026 NFL Draft will be an easy way to do so for the Jets. With the No. 2 pick, the Jets could select Ohio State linebacker Arvell Reese or Texas Tech edge rusher David Bailey and be in a very good place for the 2026 season and beyond by pairing them with McDonald. <\/p>\n
At the very least, the Jets will have McDonald for the 2026 and 2027 seasons and hopefully longer. But the pass rush certainly could be much better over the next two years with him in town and a rookie coming in. The decision to keep McDonald on the fifth-year option in 2027 is an easy one. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The New York Jets have just over one month left to officially make a decision on the fifth-year…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":845058,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[2051],"tags":[7,226,1917,255,2321,2097,6],"class_list":{"0":"post-845057","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-new-york-jets","8":"tag-football","9":"tag-jets","10":"tag-new-york","11":"tag-new-york-jets","12":"tag-newyork","13":"tag-newyorkjets","14":"tag-nfl"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nfl\/116324406012860728","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/845057","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=845057"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/845057\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/845058"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=845057"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=845057"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=845057"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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