The New York Jets are mired in one of their worst defensive seasons in franchise history. They are allowing 28.4 points per game, ranking 30th in the NFL, which would be their second-worst ranking since the league increased to 32 teams in 2002.

Under a defensive-minded head coach in Aaron Glenn, it’s a disappointing output for a franchise that, for all of its offensive woes, has often been successful defensively. The issues got so far out of hand that Glenn had to put his foot down and fire defensive coordinator Steve Wilks with three games to go.

As much as Wilks hamstrung the unit, New York’s primary defensive issue is a lack of talent. Expectations were already modest for the Jets’ defense entering the year. Once they traded All-Pros Sauce Gardner and Quinnen Williams at the deadline, their depth chart started looking similar to something you’d see in a preseason game.

It can be argued that the Jets have no more than one player on their current defense who would start for the majority of NFL teams.

That man isn’t Will McDonald, Jermaine Johnson, or Quincy Williams. It’s a 2024 seventh-round pick whom the Jets acquired in August by swapping a 2026 sixth-rounder for a 2026 seventh-rounder: 24-year-old defensive tackle Jowon Briggs.

After being thrust into a featured role following the Quinnen Williams trade, Briggs instantly began a hot streak, building on the flashes he displayed in small spurts during the first half of the season. Week after week, he’s extended that stretch of outstanding play. About a month and a half since the trade deadline, Briggs has yet to show any signs of slowing down.

Slowly but surely, his “hot streak” is turning into a full season of elite-level production. Briggs is starting to look like more than just a nice silver lining in a dismal defensive season.

Is it time to label Briggs as a budding star for the Jets?

It cannot be understated how high Jowon Briggs has risen

There are fun little stretches of promise from an underrated young player, and then there’s what Briggs is doing. He’s playing like one of the absolute best defensive tackles in football, and he’s been doing it for quite a while now.

Despite the ineptitude of the defenders around him, Briggs’ success continued in the Jets’ 48-20 loss to Jacksonville. He was the only defensive lineman who came to play, racking up three tackles and three pressures.

Not only did Briggs’ six combined tackles and pressures lead the Jets’ defensive line (including the edge rushers), but his total was equal to the rest of the Jets’ defensive tackles combined.

In fact, even if you throw in the Jets’ edge rushers, Briggs was responsible for 30% of all tackles and pressures recorded by Jets defensive linemen (6 of 20). For perspective on how much of a team-carrying rate that is, Aaron Donald had a 25.4% mark in that category during his 2020 Defensive Player of the Year season.

Briggs had one particularly impressive sequence where he forced the Jaguars into a red zone field goal attempt. On first-and-goal, he stuffed a run, and on third-and-goal, he hit Trevor Lawrence to force an errant throw, saving a likely touchdown against poor coverage from Brandon Stephens (which would’ve been Stephens’ seventh score allowed in 2025).

It’s become routine to see Briggs put up performances like this one, especially in the pass game. With three pressures on 31 pass-rush snaps, Briggs had a 9.7% pressure rate, marking his sixth consecutive game with a pressure rate at least two points above the positional average (7.7%). It was also his sixth straight game with multiple pressures (and fifth out of six with at least three pressures).

This is the type of stuff you only see from the league’s most dominant interior pass rushers. The numbers back it up.

Across his six games since the Williams trade, Briggs has been one of the most disruptive interior pass rushers in football. The company he’s in demands that Jets fans start taking him seriously as a star in the making.

Here are some of Briggs’ pass-rush metrics from Weeks 10-15, via Pro Football Focus (ranks among DTs with 100+ pass-rush snaps):

  • 16.8% pressure rate (2nd, trails only Quinnen Williams)
  • 22.0% pass-rush win rate (2nd, trails only Quinnen Williams)
  • 87.7 PFF pass-rush grade (2nd, trails only Chris Jones)

Every means of evaluating pass-rushing agrees that Briggs is getting after the quarterback like a household-name player. Whether it’s the rate at which he generates pressure, the rate at which he simply beats his blocker (win rate), or his ability to win in a high-quality fashion (the main way to pump up your PFF pass-rush grade), Briggs is checking every single box.

There are no signs of Briggs’ numbers being fluky. And now that this streak has reached six games, the sustainability of his recent production is only increasing as he continues stacking elite performances.

As a matter of fact, we’ve reached a point where you don’t even have to isolate the post-trade stretch to find Briggs among the game’s best defensive tackles. His season-long numbers are now in elite company, too.

On the year, across all 14 of his appearances, here are Briggs’ pass-rush metrics and their rankings among 81 defensive tackles:

  • 13.4% pressure rate (2nd, trails Jeffery Simmons)
  • 15.2% pass-rush win rate (2nd, trails Simmons and Chris Jones)
  • 82.4 PFF pass-rush grade (5th, trails Dexter Lawrence, Maliek Collins, Jones, and Simmons)

The only other player who ranks top-five in all three categories is Simmons, a three-time Pro Bowler and two-time All-Pro who is well on his way to earning both distinctions again in 2025.

As we say every week when evaluating breakout players like Briggs, the only question moving forward is whether they can sustain this level of play. By now, the ceiling is clearly there for him. We just have to see if Briggs can keep it going.

We’ve already been saying that for about a month, though. When Briggs came out with one great game following the Williams trade, it was a one-off. When he did it a second time, it became a trend to keep an eye on. And now that he’s continued thriving for six straight games, it’s starting to seem unlikely that this is a random blip on the radar.

The Jets might have found a star defensive tackle from out of nowhere.