The New York Jets used the 2026 offseason to complement their young core with a bevy of accomplished veterans, aiming to provide their future leaders with strong figures to learn from.

Among those accomplished veterans is three-time first-team All-Pro safety Minkah Fitzpatrick, acquired from the division-rival Miami Dolphins in a March trade.

Fitzpatrick has spent much of training camp going toe-to-toe with second-year tight end Mason Taylor, the son of Jason Taylor, who, like Fitzpatrick, was a standout defender in Miami before coming to the Jets in the back end of his career.

Clearly, battling against an All-Pro safety has been a beneficial experience for the younger Taylor, who taught the veteran a lesson of his own during Tuesday’s training camp practice. In a clip shared to the Jets’ official social media, Taylor leaps over Fitzpatrick and reaches above the veteran’s head to pluck away a deep pass from Geno Smith.

Catches like these are hardly surprising from Taylor, who already established himself as an elite contested-catch threat in his rookie year. According to Pro Football Focus, Taylor caught 11 of his 14 contested targets, a 78.6% catch rate, ranking second-best among qualified tight ends behind only George Kittle.

It’s especially impressive that Taylor pulled off this type of grab against the coverage of Fitzpatrick, who remains one of the NFL’s best safeties at playing the ball in man-coverage situations. Per PFF, Fitzpatrick recorded five forced incompletions on 13 man-coverage targets in 2025, giving him a 38.5% forced incompletion rate, placing second-best among safeties with at least 10 man-coverage targets.

“Iron sharpens iron” hardly gets more accurate than this specific scenario. You have one of the league’s top two contested-catch tight ends of 2025 going up for a jump ball against one of the league’s top two on-ball-playmaking safeties in man coverage.

This time, it was the 22-year-old tight end coming out on top. It’s an exciting sign for the Jets, signaling that their plan to complement their youngsters with veterans who can push them is working.

The next step is translating it to the regular season. If Taylor is getting this done in practice against the likes of Fitzpatrick, there is plenty of reason to believe he will do it against anyone he faces in the regular season.

That’s exactly why creating a competitive environment in practice is so valuable for the development of young players.