The Jets have signed their first-round pick.
They announced that offensive tackle Armand Membou agreed to terms with the team on Thursday. The seventh overall pick’s four-year pact is worth over $31.9 million and the Jets have an option for a fifth season.
Membou started 30 games at right tackle for Missouri and performed well at the Scouting Combine to solidify himself as one of the top offensive line prospects in the draft.
It’s the second straight year that the Jets took a tackle in the first round and 2024’s top pick Olu Fashanu is expected to be bookend the line at left tackle with Membou on the right side.
The Jets released three players Thursday, the team announced.
Linebacker Jimmy Ciarlo and wide receivers Easop Winston and Marcus Riley were cut.
Ciarlo originally signed with the Jets a year ago as an undrafted rookie free agent out of Army. The Jets waived him in August and re-signed him this offseason.
He served as a Black Knights co-captain in 2023 and started 24 games in 2022-23.
Winston signed with the Jets in January after spending the last six weeks of the 2024 season on the Jets’ practice squad. The Washington State wide receiver also has spent time with the Rams, Saints, Browns and Seahawks. He played three games with New Orleans in 2021.
Riley signed with the Jets as an undrafted rookie free agent out of Florida A&M after the 2024 draft. The Jets waived him in August and re-signed him this offseason.
For four seasons, Robert Saleh was the 49ers’ defensive coordinator under head coach Kyle Shanahan. After middling results from 2017-2018, Saleh coached a dominant unit in 2019 that helped San Francisco reach Super Bowl LIV.
Now Saleh is back with the 49ers after a four-year stint as head coach of the Jets. He told reporters on Thursday that he had no interest in working for another team as DC.
“I have a tremendous amount of respect for this organization,” Saleh said, via Nick Wagoner of ESPN. “They gave me so much and during the first two years, if you think about those first two years as the coordinator in ’17 and ’18, it wasn’t easy, and it could have been very easy for them to move on for me.
“I’m indebted to this organization, to those men for the rest of my life. They stuck with me and we made it happen. We did what we needed to do and the rest is history and I’m excited about the opportunity to get a chance to do it again with them.”
San Francisco ranked No. 2 in yards allowed and No. 8 in points allowed in 2019. New York finished No. 4 and No. 3 in yards allowed in Saleh’s final two full seasons as head coach.
The Jets declared Justin Fields their starter shortly after signing him, and backup quarterback Tyrod Taylor says he can live with that.
Taylor declined to say whether he expected to get a chance to compete for the starting job but told Rich Cimini of ESPN that whether he is in contention for the starting job or not won’t change the way he prepares.
“Whether I did or whether I didn’t, my mindset and the way I condition myself to get ready for a season since my rookie year has been [to] approach each and every day as if you’re the starter,” Taylor said. “As a quarterback, you’re an opportunity away, so you want to be well prepared for that opportunity.”
Taylor, who signed a two-year deal with the Jets last year and backed up Aaron Rodgers in 2024, said he and Fields are friends and he hopes to give Fields a sounding board as a more experienced quarterback.
“We’ve been good friends throughout his time in the league as well,” Taylor said. “So I’m here to support and help the team win in any form or fashion, whether it’s me on the field or whether it’s me being able to shed some light and experience and coach guys through, whether it’s in the quarterback room or any other position. Any knowledge or experience that I could offer to the younger guys that helps the team win, at the end of the day, is what I’m here to do. I’m looking forward to doing that.”
Taylor, who will turn 36 in August, is on his seventh NFL team and always finds a way to make a roster, preparing to be a starter even though he usually isn’t.
Aaron Rodgers could be getting the gang back together in Pittsburgh. Well, part of it.
While Rodgers’s coaching BFF Nathaniel Hackett has yet to take a job with the Steelers, one of Rodgers’s receiver BFFs could end up joining him for a third time, in the city known for its three rivers.
Per a source with knowledge of the situation, Jets receiver Allen Lazard is “in play” to be traded to the Steelers.
Why Lazard? Because Rodgers completely and totally trusts him. And Lazard, for whatever reason, performs much better with Rodgers than he does without him. (At one point during his first year in New York, during Rodgers’s season-long injury absence, Lazard became a healthy scratch.)
Lazard recently slashed his 2025 salary from $11 million to $2.5 million, with $1.75 million of it guaranteed. That becomes a downright bargain for the Steelers, who suddenly have a gaping hole on the depth chart behind DK Metcalf.
The possibility hinges largely if not entirely on Rodgers signing with the Steelers. While nothing with Rodgers is ever done until it’s done, the persistent thinking continues to be that it will happen.
And, as we hear it, there could be something to the notion that he’s waiting until after the schedule is released, so that the league can’t saddle the Steelers with extra prime-time and/or short-week games.
