Wide receiver Arian Smith has signed his first NFL contract.
The Jets announced that the deal was finalized on Monday. It’s a four-year contract for the fourth-round pick.
Smith led Georgia with 817 receiving yards during the 2024 season. He had 48 catches and four touchdowns as well and he finished his college time with 68 catches for 1,356 yars and 10 touchdowns.
Garrett Wilson, Allen Lazard, Xavier Gipson, Josh Reynolds, Tyler Johnson, and Malachi Corley are also on the wide receiver depth chart.
Smith is the sixth Jets draft pick to sign with the team. Second-round tight end Mason Taylor is the only unsigned player in the draft class.
The Dolphins signed free agent cornerback Kendall Sheffield, the team announced Monday.
Sheffield, 28, played six games for the Jets last season, seeing action on 92 defensive snaps and 48 on special teams. He made nine tackles.
Sheffield has appeared in 49 career games with 20 starts with Atlanta (2019-21), San Francisco (2023), Tennessee (2023) and the Jets (2024). He has totaled 108 tackles, six passes defensed and two forced fumbles in his career, along with six special teams tackles.
Sheffield also spent time on the practice squad with Dallas in 2022.
He entered the NFL as a fourth-round pick of the Falcons in 2019.
In some cities, the brother of a current or former player has gotten a tryout at rookie minicamp. In New Jersey, the brother of two current brothers on the roster is getting a look-see.
Giovanni Williams, the brother of Jets defensive tackle Quinnen Williams and Jets linebacker Quincy Williams, is participating in the Jets’ rookie minicamp on a tryout basis.
Giovanni spoke with reporters on Saturday.
“Quinnen told me, ‘Be yourself.’ He said, ‘Whatever happens, happens. God already got it for you,’” Williams said, via Colin Martin of SNY.tv. “Quincy told me, he knows the position we play, we play the same position, he told me, ‘Control your mind, control your body. Just have control of yourself and you can have control of your game.’”
Giovanni Williams played at Texas A&M-Kingsville in 2021 and 2022. He transferred to Mills College for 2023 and 2024.
He’s one of six tryout players with the Jets. It sounds as if he’d perhaps prefer making another team, if he could.
“I have my own dreams, my own story,” Giovanni Williams said. “I just didn’t want to follow behind Quincy and Quinnen, I want to make my own name.”
Still, he’ll embrace it if it happens.
“It would mean a lot to me,” Giovanni Williams said. “Just to know I came to the minicamp and just did what I could. I was coachable, I had urgency. Just to be on the team with my brothers, it would feel good, it would be historical.”
Indeed it would. As noted by Rich Cimini of ESPN.com, three brothers haven’t played for the same team since the 1920s, when it happened three times: (1) the Rooneys of thw Duluth Eskimos; (2) the Nessers of the Columbus Panhandles; and (3) the Kinderdines of the Dayton Triangles.
Tight end Mason Taylor had his first practice with the Jets on Friday, but it wasn’t the first time that the second-round pick put on a Jets jersey.
Pictures of Taylor sporting Mark Sanchez’s No. 6 at a childhood birthday party surfaced after the Jets took him because it highlighted the fact that Taylor is playing for one of his father’s former teams. Jason Taylor played for the Jets in 2010 and much has been made of Taylor’s family ties over the last couple of weeks.
Taylor’s father is a Pro Football Hall of Famer and the rookie said on Friday that he welcomes people linking the two of them even though the connection carries elevated expectations.
“There’s high expectations, for sure, just because of the last name,” Taylor said, via Dennis Waszak of the Associated Press. “But I mean, when people say, like, ‘Oh, let him have his shine,’ you know, ‘Stop saying his dad’s name,’ I mean, I love it. We’re family.”
Taylor’s uncle Zach Thomas is also a Hall of Famer and he knows many people may feel he’s in their shadows, but he said “I love modeling my game after theirs” and the Jets will be hoping he has some portion of their success in his own career.
Hall of Fame quarterback Brett Favre will be permitted to continued to pursue a defamation lawsuit against Mississippi auditor Shad White.
The Associated Press reports that, on Thursday, the Mississippi Supreme Court denied White’s request to dismiss the civil action filed against him.
“The facts of this case have not changed and Auditor White will continue to defend himself from this ridiculous and frivolous lawsuit,” White’s office said in a statement.
In court filings, White argued that the “continued litigation of this case not only threatens important First Amendment rights,” and that "[e]qually if not more worrisomely, it discourages public servants from doing their jobs.”
Favre’s lawsuit, which began in 2023, claims that White falsely accused the former Packers, Jet, and Vikings quarterback of stealing taxpayer money in both media appearances and in a book.
Favre has strongly denied wrongdoing in connection with the Mississippi welfare scandal. He has never been criminally charged.
