The Jets have four quarterbacks on the roster. Beyond once-and-current starter Geno Smith, there are major questions about the depth chart.
They added Bailey Zappe, who has nine career starts between stints with New England and Cleveland, after the 2025 season. They have Brady Cook, who started four games last year as an undrafted rookie.
And they added fourth-round rookie Cade Klubnik, who slid to round four after entering the 2025 college football season as a potential first-round draft pick.
As explained by Rich Cimini of ESPN, the Jets want to see what Klubnik can do in the upcoming OTAs before possibly adding a more established veteran backup.
They’ve met with Russell Wilson, who says he’s weighing an offer with the Jets against an opportunity at CBS. (To date, he has accepted neither.)
Klubnik, as Cimini notes, looked good at the rookie minicamp. It will be a tougher test during practices including veteran players. If he passes, the Jets could eventually decide to make him the primary understudy to Smith for 2026.
Which would lay the foundation for Klubnik eventually becoming the starter for the Jets.
Who doesn’t like a #RevengeGame to start the season?
One such matchup will occur between the Jets and Titans, with Tennessee now employing Robert Saleh as head coach.
Saleh spent 2021-2024 as New York’s head coach before he was fired after Week 5 with a 2-3 start. Now, after a season back with the 49ers as the club’s defensive coordinator, Saleh has another chance to be a head coach with the Titans.
While it will surely be a storyline at the beginning of September, Saleh told reporters on Thursday that he’s not making very much of opening the year against his former club.
“I’ve said it before, I’m appreciative of the Jets and everything that I had,” Saleh said, via Turron Davenport of ESPN. “It’s been over a year and a half now. In the NFL, it’s kind of like 10 years.
“It’s to be expected with the NFL, but I don’t think anything of it.”
That’s at least Saleh’s public stance. We’ll see if something comes up once the players are between the white lines in September.
The Giants will have a joint practice with the Dolphins before the teams play in Week 2 of the preseason on Aug. 22.
Dolphins head coach Jeff Hafley revealed that news earlier this week.
That, though, is the Giants’ only joint practice this year.
Paul Schwartz of the New York Post reports that the Giants will not hold their annual joint practice with the Jets.
The Giants and Jets play their annual preseason game in Week 3 of the exhibition season.
The Giants will spend the first two weeks of training camp at The Greenbrier in White Sulphur Springs, West Virginia.
Titans defensive tackle Jeffery Simmons has seen a lot of players come and go since joining the team in 2019 and one of this offseason’s departures hit him with particularly strong force.
Defensive tackle T’Vondre Sweat was traded to the Jets in exchange for edge rusher Jermaine Johnson. Simmons said during an appearance on CBS Sports’ Offseason Playbook that he was caught off guard when Sweat called him with the news in March because he had taken on a mentorship role for a younger player he believed was headed for bigger things.
Simmons went on to call General Manager Mike Borgonzi for more of a download on why the team decided to go in that direction.
“It was a surprise to me,” Simmons said. “Just trying to get a feel for why. I feel like Sweat — he’s got some potential that sometimes he doesn’t understand. For me, that’s the reason why I’m like Sweat, you’re coming down to Dallas with me this offseason. I wanted to pull that out of him to be able to be like ‘I have so much potential. I can be the best nose tackle in the game of football.’ And he has the potential to do that. I hate it, but it’s a business.”
Sweat was a 2024 second-round pick in Tennessee, which meant he joined the team before Borgonzi and head coach Robert Saleh were in the organization. They determined Johnson was a better fit for where they want to go and a win-win trade would be a plus for a pair of AFC teams that haven’t been consistent winners in a long time.
Though they drafted quarterback Fernando Mendoza at No. 1 overall in April, the Raiders are one of five teams without a scheduled primetime game in 2026.
That’s not something new from the NFL, as the Titans didn’t have a primetime game in 2025 either after selecting quarterback Cam Ward with the first overall pick.
While the Raiders are a storied team with a nationally recognized brand, the fact that the team has won just seven games over the last two seasons is surely factoring into how attractive — or, in this case, unattractive — the club is for games in a standalone window.
In a conference call on Friday, NFL VP of broadcasting planning Mike North was asked whether or not the uncertainty of Mendoza being Las Vegas’ starting quarterback factored into the decision to keep the Raiders out of a primetime slot.
“As far as the Raiders go, I mean, nobody knows if or when Mendoza might play,” North said, via Ryan McFadden of ESPN. “It would certainly be great if we knew. We don’t. But they went out and signed a very competent veteran quarterback, and if they find themselves, you know, hovering around .500 and playoff-relevant in the middle of the season, they might be a little more reluctant to pull the trigger and move to the rookie. And if they are playoff-relevant, they will find themselves flexed into bigger national television windows, whether it’s Sunday night, Monday night, or just a bigger footprint on a Sunday afternoon.
“Not to point fingers, but I think the best comp is probably Tennessee from last year. They drafted No. 1 overall, took a quarterback who looks like he can play in this league, [and] they didn’t happen to get a national television appearance last year, either. … We don’t draft our way into primetime. We play our way into primetime.”
While head coach Klint Kubiak and the rest of the Raiders’ brass have said that they’d prefer to have a veteran start over a rookie quarterback early, Mendoza could be in the starting lineup sooner than later over veteran Kirk Cousins. We’ll see how Las Vegas’ quarterback situation plays out and whether or not the club can play its way into a flexed primetime spot as the season unfolds.
