Gang Green Nation
The New York Jets are in the middle of another disappointing season. This one stings more than more most. They’ve traded away multiple franchise players, Aaron Glenn has struggled to find his groove as a head coach, and the team simply doesn’t have many players to root for.
So, in an effort to find something, anything, to keep myself interested in a lost season, I went on a search to find those players that have stood out among the wreck. And to my surprise there were a fair few that I found myself wanting to highlight.
Now, these guys aren’t going to be full-time starters, they won’t play premium positions, but they are potential building blocks that could end up playing a role on the next Jets team. And that means something in a year that would otherwise be just a vehicle to the next rebuild.
Jowon Briggs came to the Jets as a cast out. The downtrodden Cleveland Browns decided they had enough interior D-Line depth and could send off a promising young player. After all, when you spend a top-5 pick on a DT, you don’t really need to hold onto the Day 3 guy from last year.
The Browns’ loss has been the Jets’ gain. For next to nothing, the Jets have found a starting-caliber DT. And he’s going to get a shot to start, and play over 30 snaps a game, the rest of the season with Quinnen Williams now in Dallas.
Where Briggs has really excelled is as a pass rusher. He has a 14.2% pressure rate this season as a pass rusher. That’s the best mark in the NFL among DTs with at least 100 pass rush snaps. Now, is Briggs likely to keep that up with more snaps? That’s the big question, isn’t it? We have two games of proof for that, and well he has 11 pressures in 41 pass rush snaps in those two games. That’s an insane 26.8% pressure rate. Now, those numbers aren’t sustainable, but that 14.2% number? It’s highly unlikely that Briggs will be able to maintain an NFL-best pass rush rate for the rest of the season, but he doesn’t have to. If he’s above average that’s a massive win for the Jets.
Now, that doesn’t mean Briggs is a future All-Pro bottled up. He has his flaws. Top of the list is that he’s been an incredibly poor run defender. He has just a 61.1 run defense grade and a 52.4 tackle grade. He’s missed over 11% of his tackles this season, including one in each of the last two games. Both Cleveland and New England took advantage of Briggs poor run defense. And as a DT, it’s going to be hard to see the field as a starter with poor run defense.
The honest truth is that Briggs is likely to be a rotational pass-rushing DT if he’s on the next good Jets team. But, the potential is there for more....
