The biggest disappointment of them all.
No, it wasn’t Aaron Rodgers, regardless of how well (or not) you think he played in 2024. There was always a risk that the 41-year-old would fall off to some degree, and everyone knew it.
Maybe it was the Jets’ defense. The assumption was that they would be elite, and they were objectively bad. But I don’t know if there is an individual player you could point to and say that their plummeting performance caused the defense’s downfall. Sauce Gardner certainly wasn’t as elite as he had been in his first two seasons, but he was not horrible — he was actually good, just not great.
No, the biggest disappointment in the Jets’ season was one Breece Hall.
I think how poorly Hall played this season has gone largely under the radar. The prevailing assumption among the fan base is that the Jets’ run-blocking kept Hall’s production down. But that is far, far from the truth.
Coming off a strong 2023 season despite a putrid offensive line situation, Hall seemed primed to ascend to stardom behind a reworked line. Although the Jets’ run-blocking was putrid to start the season, it rebounded starting in Week 6.* You wouldn’t know it, though, based on Hall’s final statistics.
* Note: I utilized Week 6 as a delineation not because Robert Saleh was fired before that game but because Hall averaged 6.3 yards per carry that week, the first indicator of an inflection point.
From Weeks 1-5, Hall averaged just 3.1 expected yards per carry, which would have been the second-lowest among all qualified running backs over a full season in the NFL Next Gen Stats era (since 2016). However, he somehow managed to be worse than his blocking, posting 3.0 yards per carry.
Hall’s elusiveness was poor during that time. He averaged just 0.105 missed tackles forced per touch, which ranked 39th out of 41 qualified backs (min. 80 carries), per Pro Football Focus. NGS was nearly as bearish on his performance, as his 18.5% missed tackles forced rate by their calculation ranked 35th.
Though Hall gained some yards after contact (2.98, 24th), even that was below average. Accordingly, his PFF elusiveness rating was just 31.2, ranking 38th.
From Week 6 on, Hall had an average of 4.7 expected yards per carry, per NGS, the fourth-highest among 38 running backs (min. 80 carries) during that span. However, he posted just 0.1 rush yards over expected per carry, ranking 22nd.
Hall generated double the missed tackles forced per touch from Week 6 on than he did before that point at 0.208, per PFF. However, even that ranked 21st, so it was merely average. NGS paints a far more negative picture about his missed tackles forced, giving him a nearly identical 18.6% missed tackles forced rate (34th).
Even if the truth is on PFF’s side, Hall was still nowhere near where he was expected to be before the season. If it’s in the middle or closer to NGS, he was still significantly worse than average.
Hall’s yards after contact per attempt improved to 3.07, per PFF, but that also ranked 20th — again, average.
Therefore, even though his raw yards per carry number (4.7) looked good over that time, Hall still did not generate anything more than his blocking provided and was merely average at making tacklers miss.
Overall, Hall’s miserable performance over the first five weeks and average numbers from there on out produced a mediocre season. Here are his final numbers compared to 38 qualified backs (min. 120 carries).
- 4.2 yards per carry (24th)
- 0.0 rush yards over expected per carry, per NGS (25th)
- 38.4% of rushes with positive rush yards over expected, per NGS (23rd)
- -0.16 EPA per carry, per NGS (32nd)
- 34.4% success rate, per NGS (35th)
- 18.5% missed tackles forced rate, per NGS (35th)
- -8 first downs over expected, per NGS (34th)
- 0.172 missed tackles forced per rush, per PFF (26th)
- 0.199 missed tackles forced per touch, per PFF (20th)
- 3.04 yards after contact per attempt, per PFF (22nd)
Hall’s average ranking among these 10 statistics is 27.6. Out of 38 qualifiers, that would place him in the 29th percentile. Sure, he was a little better in some areas and a little worse in others, but overall, it is difficult to evaluate Hall’s season as anything other than significantly below average.
A separate trend emerges from the data, as well. According to PFF, 26.3% of Hall’s yards came on breakaway runs (runs of 15+ yards). That ranked 18th out of 38 backs, about average.
Out of context, it is difficult to know how to evaluate that number. Sometimes, having a large rate of yardage coming on breakaway runs signifies that the running back is boom-or-bust; either he gains large chunks of yards at a time or he gets stuffed.
Other times, it just means the running back is explosive, as the top three backs in this metric were Jahmyr Gibbs, Derrick Henry, and Saquon Barkley, who also had a high rate of carries with positive rush yards over expected (indicating they were consistent as well as explosive).
In the past, Hall had a very high breakaway yards rate, posting marks of 43% and 40.4% in his first two seasons. He led the league in that area in 2023. Ultimately, his big runs were what allowed him to have strong final metrics despite disastrous run-blocking. Hall would take nothing and turn it into a major gain.
In 2024, Hall’s breakaway yardage diminished significantly. In and of itself, it would not mean that he had a bad season. But in the context of his total season, it further serves to emphasize that he simply lacked explosiveness.
A further indicator of this is in explosive rush rate. Hall actually ranked ninth among backs with a 12.3% rate of runs of 10+ yards. He ranked 12th with a 5.19% rate of 15+ yards runs. But when shrinking the pie to runs of 20+ yards, Hall’s ranking falls to 25th.
In other words, Hall did gain some chunks, but they just weren’t as big as he had in the past.
How to explain this defies reason. Jets X-Factor’s Joe Blewett broke down how Hall was not nearly as explosive in 2023 as in 2022 before his torn ACL, particularly when it came to breaking tackles and making defenders miss. However, it was reasonable to assume that if Hall still managed to post excellent numbers in 2023 even without his full form back, he would be able to exceed that level in 2024 with the expected improvement in his blocking.
Instead, Hall’s blocking got much better after a rough start, but his quantitative performance was worse. He simply could not make defenders miss, generate yards after contact, or break explosive runs anywhere near the level he did in 2023, let alone in 2022.
The most obvious explanation for this is an injury. Per NGS GPS data, the top speed Hall reached all season in 2024 was 20.27 mph, while his top speed in 2023 was 21.5 mph. The only way to explain a drop-off that steep for a 23-year-old running back in his second year off an ACL tear (as compared to his first) seems to be an injury.
And we’re not just talking about the hyperextension and MCL injury in his knee that Hall sustained against the Colts that hampered him over several weeks of the season. This issue was present long before the injury. It is notable, though, that the injury was in the left knee — the same one on which he had the ACL and meniscus repair.
Was Hall dealing with this injury all season, progressively aggravating it as he put more wear and tear on it? This seems like a distinct possibility to me, although it remains to be seen if reports will ever come out about it. If not, we’ll be left with suspicions but no concrete evidence that this was anything other than a shocking drop-off.
That leads to serious questions about the Jets’ running back room. While Braelon Allen and Isaiah Davis showed flashes as rookies, both of them were ultimately not that impressive statistically, particularly when it came to breaking tackles. Some may think that they’ll improve in Year 2, but running backs tend to show far less improvement after their rookie seasons than players at other positions.
If Hall is not a top back, the Jets’ room looks dangerously thin — as does their entire offense. In 2022-23 and heading into 2024, the Jets’ dangerous offensive weapons were Garrett Wilson and Breece Hall. But now, if Davante Adams leaves, will it just be Wilson with no other skill position player that can be relied upon to be better than the league average (and most far below it)?
It’s a serious problem for the Jets. They likely expected to come into the 2025 offseason with questions over whether they’d offer Hall a contract extension. Now, the bigger question is if they’ll bring in a potential replacement.
NFL.com’s Lance Zierlein mocked Boise State running back Ashton Jeanty to the Jets at No. 7 overall. I would be absolutely flabbergasted if they went that way given their other needs. I also believe Zierlein’s justification for the move was completely asinine, as he cited Hall’s lack of 1,000-yard seasons (as if raw rushing yardage matters) as the primary reason for the Jets to draft Jeanty.
Still, even after having drafted two running backs in 2024, could the Jets go back to the well and take a running back on Day 2 this year?
I would be adamantly against such a move for several reasons. I listed the Jets’ top 10 needs this offseason, and running back was not among them. In a transition year, the Jets will need to compromise at some positions. I’d far prefer to compromise at running back and figure it out next year than to draft another running back with all those other needs.
Additionally, to a large extent, I adhere to the “running backs don’t matter” mantra of the analytics community. I strongly disagreed with drafting Hall in the second round for that very reason.
There was an additional component to my argument, though: the running back injury rate is so high that there is a tremendous likelihood that even an extremely explosive running back will be severely compromised sooner rather than later.
And guess what? That’s exactly what happened with Hall. Even though he played well in 2023, he was not nearly as explosive as in 2022. Even if an injury explained his 2024 drop-off, it furthers the overall argument that the likelihood of injury should push teams away from drafting running backs high.
If Hall does rebound in 2025, that’ll be the last year of his rookie deal, and then you run into the running back aging curve and questions about whether it’s worthwhile to extend him, as well as the reality that Hall’s cheap years (one of the primary purposes of drafting a player) will have been tremendously marred by injury.
Therefore, my stance on the Jets’ running back room is this: I do not trust Hall to bounce back, and therefore, I view the room as lackluster. However, I believe it would be a major team-building mistake to address the position this offseason. At the very least, there’s something to bet on in the room, specifically a Hall comeback and/or Allen and Davis living up to the potential in their college film.
This is not a fun place to be in, but it’s a reality for the Jets in a transition season. There are too many holes to fill and not enough resources to fill them. In his first season as Jets general manager, Darren Mougey must recognize this reality and build the team accordingly — which means leaving Hall as the starting running back in 2025.
