Woody Johnson’s teenage sons may soon be downloading EA FC 25.
Via Mark Ogden of ESPN.com, the owner of the Jets is in talks to purchase 43 percent of the Crystal Palace soccer club. He’d pay roughly $272 million for a minority stake in the franchise.
Crystal Palace is currently run by Steve Parish, Commanders principal owner Josh Harris, and Commanders minority owner David Blitzer.
Johnson, who is regarded as the leading candidate to purchase the Crystal Palace stake, bought the Jets in 2000. The Jets last made the playoffs in 2010.
In 2024, Johnson fired coach Robert Saleh early in the season. Late in the year, a report emerged regarding his teenage sons’ roles with the team, including a claim that Johnson once stopped a trade for receiver Jerry Jeudy because his sons believed Jeudy’s ratings in the Madden video game were too low.
This year, the Jets are attempting a cultural reset, with coach Aaron Glenn and G.M. Darren Mougey. Ultimately, whether it works could hinge on whether Woody lets his football people run the show.
Jets cornerback Sauce Gardner became eligible for a contract extension this offseason and he gave an update on how things look on that front at an end of minicamp press conference on Thursday.
Gardner was the defensive rookie of the year in 2022 and made back-to-back All-Pro teams before seeing his play slip along with the rest of the Jets in 2024. It does not appear that or the regime change in the organization has affected the team’s desire to keep Gardner for the long term.
Gardner said he feels “pretty good” about how those talks have gone so far and that he was present for offseason work to show that he wants to be part of the team.
“I just wanted to show my teammates, my coaches how much I want to win,” Gardner said, via Zack Rosenblatt of TheAthletic.com. “I want to be part of change in the organization.”
Whether the deal comes together by the start of the season or not, a return to form for Gardner would be the kind of change that the Jets are looking for this season.
The Giants and Jets will hold their annual preseason game in August and they’ll be spending some more time together before that matchup.
Giants head coach Brian Daboll confirmed that the teams will also hold two joint practices ahead of the game, which will be played on Saturday, August 16.
One of the practices will be held at the Giants’ facility and the other will be at Jets headquarters. The dates and other details for those sessions have not been finalized at this point.
The two teams also practiced together in 2022 and 2024, but this will be the first time that both teams host practices in the same year.
Breece Hall was on the trade market . . . unless he wasn’t.
The Jets running back heard the rumors, and until new coach Aaron Glenn called him to quell the speculation, Hall wasn’t certain what his future held.
“I mean, I was seeing it just like everybody else was seeing it,” Hall said Wednesday, via video from Ralph Vacchiano of SNY. “But if people feel like you’re not doing your job, you’re going to be replaced. It didn’t happen. . . . AG called me and told me he wanted me to be here. So, you know, for me, that meant a lot. I’m here. I’m here to work and ready to do my job. I’m proving that I deserve to be here.”
General Manager Darren Mougey refuted any trade talk involving Hall during the draft, saying the Jets had not considered dealing Hall. Glenn told Hall the same thing in a phone call.
“At first I was like, ‘OK, we’ll see what happens,’ and then AG called me and told me, he’s like, ‘Breece, do you think I want to trade you?’” Hall said. “I was like, ‘I don’t know.’ He was like, ‘Breece, I don’t want to trade you. I want you to be here. You’re going to be our running back.’ So, that felt really good.”
Hall averaged a career-low 4.2 yards per carry and a career-low 54.8 yards per game in 2024. Even though he played 16 games, Hall revealed he had a “pretty serious” knee injury.
He admits last season “sucked” in every way as the Jets went 5-12.
“Yeah, it’s always frustrating as a team and as an individual when you’re not winning games and playing as well as you expect,” Hall said. “Then, after the season, there’s always someone to blame or the blame is put on. A lot of it just so happened to kind of be on me. So, it was like, ‘OK, just get back to the drawing board, just get back to working hard.’ I know what kind of potential I have, but potential only goes so far. I want to be a product. I want to be able to say that I’ve done everything I wanted to do.”
Hall is entering the fourth and final season of his rookie deal and still looking for his first 1,000-yard rushing season and his first Pro Bowl. Glenn has indicated the team would have a running back by committee, with Braelon Allen, Isaiah Davis and Kene Nwangwu also on the depth chart at the position.
“I’m not obligated anything. I’ve got to go and prove that I am the guy,” Hall said. “I feel like I am a three-down back. Every day I’m going to prove I’m the best back on this roster and one of the best backs in the league.”
Quarterback Zach Wilson spent three tumultuous years with the Jets before he was traded to the Broncos last offseason.
Now he’s back in the AFC East on a one-year deal with the Dolphins, as head coach Mike McDaniel said Wilson was “a direct, calculated target” to be Tua Tagovailoa’s backup in 2025.
In his Tuesday press conference, McDaniel complimented Wilson for the way he’s made some adjustments when it comes to the timing of his throws.
“There’s residuals to people, just in general, that have gone through things that are very beneficial at the quarterback position or just on a football team,” McDaniel said, via transcript from the team. “But as a football player, I think he’s come close to about as much scrutiny as one could have. Your top three draft pick — he was [No.] 2 — in New York City. Well, I mean, I think Joe Namath figured that out, and everybody else is like, ‘Woah, this is a lot.’ But that’s what I see, is a guy that is playing football with the empowerment of, ‘You know what? I’m strong enough to handle anything.’
“And a guy like that — that’s continually working at his craft, who has supreme arm talent — it’s cool to watch him grow, particularly in our offense, because guys with arm talent always throw it late. You have a stronger arm, [you might say], ‘I’ll just wait and see it.’ Go back to like John Elway and dudes with cannons. A guy with arm talent like that to challenge the play, the game of football, the quarterback position, the only reason I would even challenge him in that regard is because he has the power of, ‘Yeah, this game adjustment, or what coach is asking of me is minuscule, rabbit pellets, relative.’ So he’s exhibited that.”
But moreover, McDaniel sees the experiences Wilson has had in the league as a benefit for him moving forward.
“Coming in, I’m going to challenge the guy because at the quarterback position, you are supremely challenged every drive, every quarter,” McDaniel said. “He looks like a guy that has been through some shit and found his way through it, because it does not make him worse. He learns from it.
“And that’s realistically the best thing that’s gone on this offseason is I’ve seen a lot of people match those types of energies of supreme conviction in trying to be their very best, and you do that by boldly attacking stuff a lot of times that are uncomfortable.”
Wilson did not appear in a game for the Broncos last year. In 34 career appearances with 33 starts, he’s completed 57 percent of his passes for 6,293 yards with 23 touchdowns and 25 interceptions.
