NFL coaches love to preach the value of “competition” at every position throughout each summer.

At many positions, those competitions are legitimately, well, competitive.

At others, though, they are merely for show.

The New York Jets have one of those faux competitions in progress as they prepare to face the Pittsburgh Steelers in Week 2 of the preseason tonight (7 p.m. EST).

The Jets’ strangest competition

New York had countless issues in the 2025 season, but field goal kicking was not among them. Thanks to veteran Nick Folk, who missed one kick all year, the Jets made a league-high 96.6% of their field goal attempts, as well as 100% of their extra point attempts.

However, kicking became a problem once more when Folk walked to the Atlanta Falcons in free agency.

The Jets are rolling with Cade York and Jason Sanders as the competitors to replace Folk. Neither can match Folk’s spotless resume in recent years (he is the three-time reigning field goal percentage champion), but there is a clear leader in the clubhouse here.

It’s Sanders.

The 30-year-old has enjoyed a better career than York by a wide margin. Sanders has made 84.6% of his field goal attempts and 96.6% of his extra points across a 116-game sample size in the regular season, while York has made just 73.3% of his field goals and 94.4% of his extra points in 23 games.

In his most recent season (2024), Sanders was stellar, connecting on 90.2% of his field goal attempts, including 12 of 14 from 50+ yards out. York, meanwhile, made 69.2% of his attempts in 2024, which was also his most recent regular season campaign.

It’s obvious that Sanders is the more reliable kicker. Still, in the spirit of competition, the Jets have given York a chance to beat him out.

Speaking about the addition of Sanders in June, head coach Aaron Glenn said, “Obviously, he (Sanders) did a really good job in Miami. I said this last time we spoke; any time we can get a good player that can create competition, we want to bring the player in to create that. Those guys (Sanders and York) will battle it out. I’m sure we’ll see exactly how far this goes, but it’s just creating competition.”

Glenn’s non-committal comment near the end about “seeing exactly how far this goes” may have implied that the team already knew Sanders had a leg up, and that the competition was not bound to last the entire summer.

After all, the only concern with Sanders is that he missed the entire 2025 season with a hip injury. Health aside, he is clearly a better player than York.

Provided he’s healthy, though, it’s unlikely that Sanders would lose out to York, and based on everything we’ve seen and heard, things seem to be going exactly as expected. This competition may not need to last until the end of the preseason after all.

In the Jets’ preseason opener, York went 2 for 2, but his makes were only from 27 and 38 yards. The 38-yard make, coming just before halftime, was well above the right upright and appeared to possibly be a miss, but the officials ruled it good. Regardless of the call, it was not a pretty attempt at what should have been a gimme of a kick.

Sanders, meanwhile, had a clean 47-yard make with plenty of accuracy and power. He also made his only extra point attempt.

Following the game, Sanders thoroughly out-kicked York in a session at training camp, making 7 of 8 attempts while York went 5 for 8, per Jets X-Factor’s Connor Long.

At this point, it would take a collapse of epic proportions from Sanders for the Jets to deem York a better bet going into the regular season.

The winner of this competition will have enormous shoes to fill; suffice to say, it’s pretty hard to top the one-miss season that Folk delivered in 2025. Sanders, though, has shown an elite ceiling in the league multiple times. He’s made at least 90% of his field goal attempts in three of his seven healthy seasons, highlighted by a first-team All-Pro performance in 2020 that saw him make 92.3% of his kicks (including 8 of 9 from 50+ yards).

The most appealing aspect of Sanders’ game is his reliability from long range. Since 2023, he has made 17 of his 21 attempts from 50+ yards, an 81.0% conversion rate, ranking sixth-best among kickers with at least 20 such attempts over that span.

The top-ranked player on that list is Folk, who is an incredible 18-of-20 (90.0%) on 50+ yarders since 2023. It continues to be peculiar why the Jets let him walk, unless the 41-year-old Folk was dead-set on heading to a warmer climate with an indoor stadium.

Nonetheless, if Sanders is the best version of himself, he should only be a slight downgrade from the near-perfection that Folk brought to New York in 2025, which would still make him a pretty darn good kicker.

Going into Pittsburgh tonight, the Jets’ kicking competition is technically still on, but Sanders is poised to be declared the winner sooner rather than later, as long as he does not implode against the black and gold.