The New York Jets will be without one of their more promising young defenders for the foreseeable future.
According to the team, cornerback Jarvis Brownlee Jr. (hip) has been placed on injured reserve, which will force him to miss a minimum of four games. With only five games remaining, his 2025 season may be over.
Brownlee suffered the injury in New York’s Week 12 loss to the Baltimore Ravens. He missed the team’s ensuing victory over the Atlanta Falcons and did not practice ahead of this week’s game against the Miami Dolphins.
What Brownlee’s injury means for the Jets
The injury is a tough blow for the 2024 seventh-round pick, who quickly carved out a role as New York’s starting slot corner after arriving from the Tennessee Titans in a mid-season trade.
It’s also a bad break for the Jets, who will miss out on precious snaps that could have been used to evaluate a player who was trending toward a 2026 starting spot.
In just his second game as a Jet, Brownlee had taken over as the team’s primary slot corner. He impressed his coaches so much that they kept him in the role when their usual slot corner, Michael Carter II, returned from injury. The Jets traded Carter II soon after, signaling their faith in Brownlee as the starting slot corner for the rest of the season.
Across seven games with the Jets, the 24-year-old was up-and-down, showing bright flashes along with some ghastly lows.
On the positive end, Brownlee was a highly active tackler. Since coming to New York, Brownlee is tied for the most defensive stops among NFL cornerbacks with 17, and that’s despite ranking 71st at the position with 279 snaps. He is averaging one stop every 16.4 snaps, a mind-boggling number for a cornerback, indicating just how impressive he’s been at finding the football. His physicality around the line of scrimmage was a welcome addition to a defense that had been struggling with tackling.
However, Brownlee struggled with pass coverage and overall discipline. He committed eight penalties in his seven games with the team, six of those coming on defense and two on special teams. In coverage, Brownlee allowed a 103.7 passer rating on throws into his coverage, part of the reason he earned a rough PFF coverage grade of 45.9, which ranks 109th out of 119 qualified cornerbacks since Week 5.
Brownlee is under contract with the Jets through 2027, and his cap hit in 2026 is a completely non-guaranteed $1.075 million. Based on his play to date, Brownlee has done enough to earn the chance to compete for a roster spot in the summer. Perhaps if he can put everything together in his third NFL season, Brownlee could earn back his spot as the Jets’ starting slot corner.
The injury comes at a rough time, though, as Brownlee had a chance to nail down the Jets’ 2026 slot role before the offseason. With a strong finish over the last five games, Brownlee could have built a strong enough resume to cement his spot in the starting lineup and convince the Jets to bypass making a significant investment at his position.
Now, the Jets likely won’t be able to enter the offseason with enough trust in Brownlee to cement him as the starting slot corner with no competition. His sample size of positive play is too small for him to be guaranteed any type of role. If the Jets are wise, they will strengthen the position group in free agency or the draft, giving themselves security in case Brownlee does not build on the positive flashes he showed in 2025.
After his first seven games, the hope was that Brownlee could cut down on the penalties and coverage mistakes to solidify his status as a starting-caliber slot corner. His tackling has been excellent, but his coverage production and penalty proneness are untenable for a prospective starter. If he could clean up his play in those two areas, the Jets would have themselves a starting slot corner.
Unfortunately, the Jets won’t get a chance to see Brownlee make those improvements before the offseason. It leaves Brownlee in a position where he will have to prove himself in the summer on a non-guaranteed contract, while it forces the Jets to keep the slot cornerback position on their offseason shopping list.
Nonetheless, the Jets’ trade for Brownlee was a worthwhile one, as it cost them a measly sixth-for-seventh pick swap in the 2026 draft. For that low price, they now have themselves two highly affordable years of team control over a player who, at the very least, has a strong chance of making their roster as a backup cornerback and special teamer.
Brownlee, though, will strive to prove that he can be much more than that. The potential is certainly there, as shown by his absurd tackling numbers, but he has a long way to go in some areas, and now, he will have to wait until the summer to prove that he can clean those weaknesses up.
