The New York Jets will open training camp on Thursday and that means football will be officially back after a long 6 months of nothing but speculation and predictions. Well this is my turn now to give my predictions of what I think is going to happen during training camp as well as what we can expect from gang green in 2019. The Jets certainly made a big splash during the offseason as they went from hiring a new coach to firing their general manager after the draft and bringing in a new GM just a few weeks later. Not to mention they brought in a couple of impactful players to help improve a young talented but unproven roster. That being said, here are a couple of predictions that I can see happening during the 2019 season.
Tight end position will make a huge splash: It's amazing how far the tight end position has come since the 2015-2016 season where all of the Jets tight ends caught a combined total of 26 passes. During his rookie season, Chris Herndon caught a total 39 passes last year which is 13 more than the position three years ago. Despite having Herndon missing the first four games this year, I believe that the tight ends will just be as impactful. Daniel Brown who was recently in Chicago just a year ago will have his opportunity to be a versatile threat in this offense with his height and strength. The Jets also recently brought in former Texan Ryan Griffin and drafted Trevon Wesco.
Parry Nickerson steps up in replacing Brian Poole: With Brian Poole starting training camp on the non football related injury list, this is a great opportunity for second year cornerback Parry Nickerson to step up in the primary slot corner position. Nickerson showed some flashes last year but was continuously being penalized, if he can clean it up I would love to see him to take the next step in year 2 and with Poole not being able to perform in the first couple days of training camp.
Trenton Cannon and Elijah McGuire will be cut by week 1: The Jets have recently added Bilal Powell back to the team for one last go around and they currently have five running backs on the current roster as we speak. It's hard to imagine that this team will keep more than 3 running backs, so the most likely to be cut would be both McGuire and Cannon even though they both showed a lot of potential.
Le'veon Bell wins comeback player of the year: After sitting last year out, Bell is coming into this year looking to show everyone that he is still the same dominant running back when he was in Pittsburgh. The way that he is going to be involved in this offense, it's hard to believe that he won't rush for 1,000 yards on the ground and how heavily involved he will be in the passing game as well.
The final prediction I have is that I see the Jets going 8-8 and missing the playoffs, which is still an improvement compared to how the team has previously done in the last 3 years. Still since it's the first year with a new coaching staff and front office it will be a more finding the teams identity with this staff this year.