With the start of the NFL offseason beginning in just under a week, the New York Jets have been pretty active to try and improve their roster for the 2023 season.
While Aaron Rodgers still remains the apple of the team’s eye, plenty of other NFL veterans have been made available as other organizations looking to get under the salary cap before the league year begins. It just so happens that quite a few cap casualties have become available and could provide some much-needed help at key positions.
And it also helps that there are personal connections for the Jets to try and poach some of these free agents away.
One name that became available Friday afternoon was former Tennessee Titans center, Ben Jones. The former Titan and Texan will be 34 during the regular season but is coming off his first pro-bowl selection. His previous work with the new Jets’ offensive line coach, Kevin Carter helped Jones become a locker-room favorite amongst the gritty Titans base. Add in the fact that current Jets’ center Connor McGovern is a free agent, and there’s plenty of reason to believe New York could be interested in the latest cap casualty.
Ben Jones isn’t the only vet that New York is interested in though.
Odell Beckham Jr.
The former super bowl champion for the LA Rams has been recovering from a torn ACL he suffered during Super Bowl LVI and had a workout where several teams attended to see how much juice the former All-Pro had left.
The Jets were reportedly one of those teams.
A potential match with Odell and the New York Jets makes sense for one clear reason: the team wants to pair a top veteran wide receiver with Aaron Rodgers should a trade between the two teams become official.
Reigning defensive rookie of the year award winner, Sauce Gardner also posted a screenshot of OBJ and him on facetime on Twitter Friday afternoon. Sauce later responded to the tweet saying “Being the #1 recruiter in America is stressful.”
Gardner and a plethora of other top Jets have begun to seriously recruit the likes of Rodgers and Beckham Jr. on Twitter. While New York will be waiting for Rodgers to make his decision, that announcement could be coming shortly with the four-time NFL MVP saying he did not want to hold up anything going into the league year.
And while the franchise still doesn’t have a ton of cap space, they’ve already met with C.J. Mosley, John Franklin-Myers, and D.J. Reed to try and agree to some restructures that would give New York more flexibility going into free agency according to Rich Cimini.
As free agency draws nearer, it’s clear that the Jets are doing everything in their power to end their decade-long playoff drought. And it’s obvious that there are plenty of proven veterans that could help New York get to where they need to be as well.
