Becton’s injury is to his surgically repaired right knee, but it is a separate issue
The New York Jets are braced for the worst following Mekhi Becton‘s MRI on Monday afternoon.
Becton came up limping heavily during practice and had to be helped off the field. Head coach Robert Saleh and general manager Joe Douglas were seen in deep conversation moments later.
After practice ended on Monday, Saleh sounded optimistic that Becton had avoided a serious injury. “As of now, it doesn’t seem like it’s a big deal, but knock on wood,” the coach responded to a question about Becton, proceeding to do just that. He said that the knee was stable, meaning that the doctors were hopeful that there was no structural damage.
Related Article: Mekhi Becton leaves Jets practice early with apparent leg injury
However, in the evening, reports started to surface that Becton’s injury was much worse than originally thought. The news came in drips and drabs as if the Jets beat was preparing fans for the worst and breaking the news slowly.
#Jets OT Mekhi Becton’s knee injury is more concerning than the team originally believed following practice today, sources tell me and @RapSheet. It’s a new injury and unrelated to his previous knee injury. Becton has additional medical appointments tomorrow to get more clarity.
— Mike Garafolo (@MikeGarafolo) August 8, 2022
Connor Hughes followed up to gradually reveal that the team was “preparing for the worst”:
The #Jets are very much preparing for the worst when it comes to Mekhi Becton news, I'm told. More tests tonight & tomorrow.
A brutal blow for the former first-round pick. He missed all of 2021 with a knee injury, now a chunk of his 2022 is in jeopardy. https://t.co/Q76z24xtH1
— Connor Hughes (@Connor_J_Hughes) August 9, 2022
Later, Hughes reported that the injury was to the patella, which is the kneecap.
#Jets LT Mekhi Becton's injury is to his knee cap & patella, sources tell @SNYtv.
The additional tests are to determine just how severe those injuries are. The fear is that there might be more damage than that.
— Connor Hughes (@Connor_J_Hughes) August 9, 2022
Fans may recall that Victor Cruz’s initial injury that sent his career into a downslide was a tear of his patellar tendon. It appears that Becton fractured the patella itself.
A little later, Hughes tweeted what Jets fans had already surmised.
There is legitimate fear Mekhi Becton's 2022 season could be over, I'm told. #Jets
— Connor Hughes (@Connor_J_Hughes) August 9, 2022
After all of the drama surrounding Becton this offseason and training camp, it appears that the worst has come to pass. From missing the entire 2021 season to speculation about his weight to minor scrums with the media, it has certainly been an eventful ride for Mekhi.
Unfortunately, it seems that he may not get the opportunity to make the media eat their words. In fact, it’s likely that much will be said and written about Becton’s weight in relation to his second consecutive crushing knee injury.
Joe Douglas is left with an immediate quandary at tackle. Duane Brown, who visited with the team over the weekend, is the obvious candidate. Other free-agent options are Eric Fisher, Darryl Williams, and ex-Jet Brandon Shell. Douglas can also check in on Teven Jenkins, the 2021 second-round pick from the Bears who is on the trading block.
The team can still get its offensive line on track to protect quarterback Zach Wilson and allow the running game to take off. This is just not the way they wanted things to go down.
Told y’all he couldn’t be relied upon
There was the hope that he would somehow break the trend, though.
More like insanity. An athlete with well-documented weight issues and injury prone since entering into the NFL, it was ludicrous for anyone to assume year 3 would be any different from his previous two. It’s even more delusional that it was the Jets and Jets fans who thought the injury bug, which had plagued them since Todd Bowles was HC, was somehow eliminated through sheer excitement for the upcoming season. This is what happens when history is ignored in favor of arrogance. The Jets have been left scrambling and I now expect more of the same from Wilson this season.
I’m not going to disagree that it was somewhat wishful thinking. After the news came down, Robby Sabo said that he didn’t bat an eyelash because he was expecting something like this all along. That being said, I don’t believe it was arrogant to try to get the best out of Becton; what was arrogant of Douglas was not having a foolproof backup plan. Duane Brown or another starting-caliber tackle should have been a member of this team prior to training camp. Even not signing a quality tackle in the first wave of free agency and waiting until the fourth round to draft a tackle showed a certain level of either arrogance or naivete.
However, to say that Becton’s injury leaves Wilson in the same position as last year is overly pessimistic. First of all, they signed Laken Tomlinson, who is already an upgrade over Greg Van Roten and Laurent Duvernay-Tardif from last season. Alijah Vera-Tucker has a season under his belt and should improve. If the Jets do sign Brown, they will have a serviceable replacement. Yes, there is reason to worry about Fant at right tackle; yes, Brown is 37 years old and coming off one of his worst seasons as a pro, albeit a Pro Bowl one. However, the Jets line *can pull it together. Will they? Time will tell. They didn’t look good in training camp, any of them, prior to Becton’s injury.
At the bare minimum, I expect Wilson to show some improvement this season by virtue of better talent around him. How much will depend on his own progress and, yes, the play of his offensive line in front of him.
With George Fant set to compete against an infinitely more talented group of pass rushers this season as compared to the pedestrians he faced last year, I find it overly optimistic to assume that Fant will be a world-beater. And I expect his deficiencies to expose him right out of the gate. Becton hasn’t been the only Jets Tackle to get schooled by a Jets pass rusher this summer and none of the Jets Edges come with the resume of the DEs/OLBs the Jets will face this season. So, I’m not very confident Wilson will see many clean pockets in 2022. This line was far from being complete before the draft and it’s since taken a step back. If today’s practice was any indication, Zach Wilson could very well be on IR by week 4/5. Hell, this OL can get Wilson killed on Friday if they’re not careful.
I don’t expect Fant to be a world-beater, just average. The fact that the rest of the line has been this bad is very concerning, though. To say that this line was far from complete is an exaggeration considering that Becton was the only real liability.
Have to disagree here. Fant is still an unknown commodity as he looked really great against pedestrians, but has yet to face the gauntlet that lies in wait this season. As such, he still MUST prove that he isn’t a liability. McGovern is serviceable at best. Tomlinson is the most accomplished lineman, but he could be hard pressed to make the pro bowl this year. AVT is the most promising player on the line, but it’s still a question as to what kind and how big of a leap he can make in his sophomore season. And Becton has shown to be what Becton is. And most critically, they all have yet to play a single, meaningful down together. From my perspective, all of those factors signify that the Jets’ offensive line is far from a finished product (i.e. complete). That’s not to say that they will not or cannot establish themselves over the course of the season, but losing Becton with the prior understanding that his weight, which he struggles with, contributed to a season lost to injury and not having a competent contingency plan for your developing, second year QB wasn’t even penny-wise, forget pound foolish.
To say “far from complete” was an exaggeration. It was mostly complete except for Mekhi. Yes, there are some unknowns, but that doesn’t mean that Douglas was remiss for thinking his line was mostly set.
Fant is a somewhat unknown commodity. To say that a league-average center is serviceable at best overestimates the need to have five Pro Bowlers across the line. Tomlinson doesn’t need to be a Pro Bowler to be everything the Jets want from him, and that doesn’t make him in any way a liability. AVT is a very good run blocker who has progress to make in pass protection, but there was reason to expect a big leap. The line was almost complete. What did you want Joe Douglas to do at that point, sign Riley Reiff to a $10 million deal?
I’m not saying JD shouldn’t have had a better Plan 1B. But saying “far from complete” implies that there were multiple positions that Douglas had to fortify. That’s inaccurate.
Still disagree. They are NOT A FINISHED PRODUCT, ergo they are NOT complete and nor were they when Becton was healthy. Individually, their accomplishments or lack thereof are not those of the Jets’ current OL as a whole. So, to assume the Jets OL a finished product is infinitely more egregious than to imply that the OL is still VERY much a work in progress. 8 sacks on the day after ONE out of 5 starters goes down speaks to the legitimacy of the line being far from a complete unit. If the season started tomorrow, which assessment would be closer to being correct? That the Jets’ OL is primed and ready right now to take on the league’s better DLs or that they still have A LONG WAY TO GO before anyone can say with ABSOLUTE CERTAINTY that the Jets’ OL is a finished product ready to withstand ANYTHING ANY TEAM might throw at them? From my vantage point, I would be quite wary of the Jets’ OL facing a top 15 DL if they were to play a game tomorrow.
Again, saying that they are a work in progress does not mean they’re an incomplete product. Obviously, with Becton hurt they need a tackle, and they needed a swing tackle all offseason. Incomplete = there is something that needs to be done to improve it. Minus tackle, the other four spots are pretty much set in stone.
I hear what you’re saying, but the phraseology “work in progress” is practically a definition for “incomplete.” If your team’s project is a “work in progress,” your team’s project is currently deemed to be “incomplete.” That every man has a position on the OL is inconsequential as those men can be any men. What it boils down to is: how formidable are they TOGETHER. Individual talents do not an offensive line make. It’s the timing and combination of those talents in harmony that denote the arrival of a bona-fide offensive line. As of today, the Jets’ O-line is unquestionably not that. This is what I mean by “far from complete”. They are all part of a unit that has yet to function as a single unit. Hopefully, at some point this season, if not before training camp ends, they’ll achieve that.
This is basically semantics. I don’t consider an offensive line incomplete if they have room for growth, but I guess that depends on how you define incomplete. The biggest issue was that Douglas did not have a strong insurance policy for Becton.
I agree about the continuity and chemistry of a line, which is why I was befuddled as to why Douglas waited to sign a swing tackle to begin with. Now I really don’t understand why he hasn’t rushed to get a guy in. Time is ticking. I get that he wants to be prudent financially, but this may be Zach Wilson’s potential for Year 2 growth that may be on the line.
I have to wonder a little about whether the Jets coaching staff may be partly at fault, as in coaching malpractice. The reports say Becton was limping mildly and favoring his previously injured leg before he got this last injury. If you know he’s out of shape, his knee is sore, and he’s getting killed by the DL, maybe you tell him to sit out a couple, or maybe even go back to sideline exercises. I just get this feeling the staff might have been a little frustrated and fed up with coddling him when in medical point of fact, he actually still needed to be coddled to prevent injury even though they were sick of doing that. Maybe they just got impatient, and now this. Just sayin…
It’s possible. But at the same time, Becton had at least 9 months to come into camp under 350lbs. Granted, he was not physically able to workout, but his diet plan was clearly an afterthought. His number one priority the minute he was shut down for 2021 should have been to alter his caloric intake. But the only point this offseason that Becton didn’t look like beached whale was when he showed up for training camp. Carrying who knows how much weight, particularity after knee surgery, could not have been beneficial to his healing and compounding that with physical exertion might’ve been the last straw for that surgically repaired knee. How much is the CS at fault? I can’t say. The competitive nature of elite athletes can sometimes fuel the pride before the fall. It could just as easily be the case that Becton did his best to suck it up and soldier on thinking he can condition out the kinks.
When I made my comment I had just heard former player Tiki Barber say on the radio that injuries come when you’re off balance, and you’re off balance when you’re out of shape. The thing with a guy like Becton is that its 400 pounds worth of unbalance. Ironically, his very size is what makes him vulnerable, and you just have to wonder whether the CS made the right decisions here.
If team physicians told the CS he was good to go and the player tells the CS he can go, what’s the CS supposed to do? Assume team physicians are wrong and the player is lying? When the brace came on, did Becton voice his concerns about his knee beyond “experiencing discomfort”? Or did his pride as an elite athlete help convince himself that he could work through it so that he could “prove his doubters wrong”? I doubt any CS willingly exposes any of their players to potential injury, but I also don’t doubt that most coaching staffs would look down upon any player whose availability was always a question mark. And perhaps it’s that mentality that urged Becton to give it a go when maybe a modicum of reservation would’ve behooved his return to the field.
I think that your last sentence is most likely the case. He was limping but wanted to just tough it out and then made things much worse.
As was pointed out, the Jets’ coaching staff may not have noticed that Becton was limping. It was up to Becton to pull himself out, and considering the narrative that was out there about him, there was no way he was going to do that.
That’s the thing with elite athletes. The limitations are blurred because they’re so physically gifted. The mentality is always can do without question.
Great back & forth Rivka. I love that you don’t shy away from tough questions. This last point you made is a really interesting one. Mechi should have taken himself out during warms ups. I agree. In this way, I slightly blame this intense NY Jets fanbase. The fact that he responded with that tee shirt showed that the criticism was unfortunately getting to him. If he took himself out for it being a little sore before the real full injury, then everyone would be like “fat, lazy” etc. Don’t know if I’m being clear, but the harshness of Jets social media fans may have made him push himself too far. That’s still mostly his fault, but maybe like Coach Saleh said, we have to stop dehumanizing these people. I really hope he heals up.
The problem was that, as you said, with the narrative out there about him, there was no way Mekhi was going to pull himself out of practice. Can you imagine the memes and tweets? All of those fans who are now calling him lazy and undisciplined would be screaming just as loudly. He could not take himself out.
Yup. And the problem with listening to the online narrative (which is negative about all celebrity usually) is that you paint yourself in a corner. They call him names if he takes himself out. And now that he’s hurt again, those same people are saying “He doesn’t take care of his body!”. Damned if you do, damned if you don’t. This is why I’m glad to hear that Zach turns off social media. If I were a coach I’d tell them all to do that.
All the raw talent , coupled with ZERO work ethic. All he does is talk about proving the doubters wrong. Guess what Mekhi your too fat to even stay on the field. Just shut your mouth and go away, grow up and find someone to teach you how to become a man.
It’s easy to react that way after another knee injury. But there is no way to know if this was caused by his weight specifically.
Him being overweight, did not help at all. In my opinion, he is a waste of a pick, and we need to cut ties with him. He keeps saying what he is going to do, and can’t even stay in the lineup. What a waste of talent.
I don’t disagree that his weight certainly played a role, though how much will always be the subject of speculation. Again, it’s his kneecap, which is a bone, not a muscle/tendon/ligament. It’s less likely to have been brought on by weight than the other injuries, I think (though I’m no doctor).
Regarding the waste of a pick, it certainly appears that way in hindsight. The thing is that no one was singing that tune after the 2020 season.
I’m surprised to see Brandon Shell is available. He’s an experienced right tackle (doesn’t need to adjust) and I have a friend in Seattle who said the Seahawks liked him. He had a good, solid PFF score of 67 for 2021. The Jets should snap him up.
I saw Nania had that too. I kind of like him as an option. I know he’s got injury problems too but he’s young enough and has been in NY. I wonder how he fits in the Jets’ scheme?
He ranked 45th out of 73 tackles (min. 175 snaps, the highest minimum I could get that included Shell) in zone blocking last season. Not great, but not terrible.
Is Shell’s ranking hire than Edoga or McDermott?