Building a dominant NFL team isn’t just about accumulating talent; it’s about knowing how to maximize the talent you have.
Each year, we see teams finish with win totals that either exceed or fall short of expectations based on their on-paper talent. Some teams create a whole that is greater than the sum of the parts, and some do the opposite.
It is imperative for NFL coaching staffs to understand what their team’s greatest weapons are and how to build game plans that emphasize them. If you put your team’s best attributes at the forefront, you can minimize the damage of your weaknesses.
Without further ado, let’s break down the top 10 individual skills on the New York Jets’ roster entering the 2026 season. Whether it’s Garrett Wilson’s hands or David Bailey’s explosiveness, these are the specific weapons that New York must rely on to win games.
10. Kene Nwangwu’s kick returning
Kene Nwangwu is the NFL’s active leader in kick return touchdowns (5) and yards per kick return (29.7).
Nwangwu has scored a kick return touchdown in four of his five NFL seasons, including both of his campaigns with the Jets, despite playing only 12 games in green.
Isaiah Williams gets an honorable mention here after earning some All-Pro votes in 2025 for his returning efforts, but Nwangwu has the more proven track record.
A special teams weapon like Nwangwu can flip games. The Jets saw it firsthand in 2025, as they would have gone winless if Nwangwu and Williams had not delivered game-flipping returns in each of their three narrow victories.
Ideally, in 2026, Nwangwu adds wins that bring the Jets from mediocrity to wild card contention, rather than from winless to the No. 2 pick.
New York wisely prioritized Nwangwu this offseason, re-signing him to a one-year, $2 million deal worth up to $3 million. NFL teams can be meticulous about the cap, so it would be easy for the Jets to pinch pennies with a player who offers no value on offense or defense, but they made the right move by recognizing Nwangwu’s impact on winning.
9. Mason Taylor’s contested catching
Mason Taylor will want to work on eliminating easy drops from his game, as he tied for sixth among tight ends with five drops in 2025.
However, he is already tremendous at securing the toughest targets. Taylor ranked seventh among tight ends with 11 contested catches, and he did it on just 14 targets, giving him a 78.6% contested catch rate. Only George Kittle had a better rate among tight ends with at least 10 contested targets.
Taylor’s outlook with the Jets has dramatically shifted since New York used the 16th overall pick on fellow tight end Kenyon Sadiq. Clearly, Taylor’s production ceiling is now much lower than it was before the draft.
While Sadiq projects to lead the Jets’ tight ends in targets moving forward, New York can still extract second-round value from Taylor by prioritizing his contested-catch skills. This is a guy who caught nearly 80% of his contested targets as a 21-year-old rookie. He can be a force to be reckoned with in the red zone.
Even if Taylor cedes receptions and yards to Sadiq, he can be a major difference-maker for the Jets by scoring a bundle of red zone touchdowns.
8. Geno Smith’s In/Dig route
Whether you call it the “in” route or the “dig” route, Geno Smith is a beast at it.
Smith comes to the Jets with plenty of questions surrounding his game after a disastrous season in Las Vegas. One thing the Jets can trust him with, though, is in-breaking throws over the middle.
Over his four seasons as a veteran starting quarterback (2022-25), Smith has been lights-out on the in/dig route. He is averaging 0.483 EPA (Expected Points Added) per attempt on in/dig routes since 2022, which is substantially above the 2025 NFL average on those throws (0.292).
On in/dig routes over the past four seasons, Smith has completed 97 of 157 attempts (61.8%) for 1,593 yards, eight touchdowns, seven interceptions, and 86 first downs. That’s a whopping 10.1 yards per attempt, with a sublime 54.8% of his attempts going for first downs.
The exciting news for Jets fans who are trying to believe in Smith is that Frank Reich’s offense should be tailor-made to unlock this aspect of Smith’s game. Over Reich’s last three seasons in the NFL, the in/dig route was his favorite route to call, based on how often his teams targeted it relative to the NFL average.
7. Demario Davis’ run defense
Age has sapped away some of the elite coverage skills that Demario Davis had in his peak years with the New Orleans Saints. However, Davis remains a formidable run defender.
Davis earned an 88.9 run defense grade from Pro Football Focus in 2025, ranking sixth among linebackers. His 39 run stops were the fourth-most at the position.
The Jets’ starting linebacker duo has the potential to complement each other well. Davis’ physicality and run defense can cover for the smaller Jamien Sherwood, who had tackling woes in 2025, while Sherwood’s superior athleticism can cover for Davis’ decline in coverage.
Both players will be asked to handle responsibilities in both pass and run defense, but the Jets can do their part to ensure they are each used to their strengths. Rangier coverage assignments should go to Sherwood, while Davis should play closer to the line of scrimmage.
Expect Davis to be the Jets’ MIKE linebacker, while Sherwood slides over to the WILL spot.
6. Breece Hall’s burst
A few years ago, Breece Hall’s home-run speed would have been in the top spot of this list, but that part of Hall’s game hasn’t been seen in a while. In 2025, he only had one rush for 40+ yards, and he hasn’t had a rush for 60+ yards since 2023.
Hall’s top-end speed is a question mark at this point of his career, but he still offers outstanding burst in short areas. He explodes out of his hop-step as well as any running back in the league, and it allows him to separate for chunk gains at a high clip.
In 2025, Hall ranked fourth in the NFL with 17 rushes for 15+ yards. He added six receptions for 15+ yards, all coming on short passes.
Even if Hall can’t hit grand slams the way he used to, he can still be a high-end bell-cow back on the strength of his ability to consistently generate chunk gains.
5. Jowon Briggs’ interior pass rushing
Last August, the Jets traded a sixth-for-seventh pick swap to acquire a rotational run stuffer who was chosen in the seventh round of the previous draft.
Now, his pass rushing is among the top five individual skills on the Jets’ roster.
Jowon Briggs’ pass rushing ascension was the most impressive development story of the Jets’ 2025 season. After a rookie year in which he had no sacks and four total pressures, his name can now be found beside the NFL’s elites in just about every interior pass-rushing category.
In 2025, Briggs ranked fourth among defensive tackles (min. 250 pass rush snaps) in PFF’s pass-rush grade (85.6), third in pass-rush win rate (15.3%), and seventh in pressure rate (11.9%).
Briggs was already showing hints of pass rushing progress early in the year, but it wasn’t until after the Quinnen Williams trade that he took off. From Week 10 onward, Briggs was second in pass rush grade (89.4), third in pass-rush win rate (19.4%), sixth in pressure rate (14.4%), and seventh in total pressures (29).
The only player over that span who fared better than Briggs in all of those categories was Chris Jones.
Compare Briggs’ post-trade stats to Quinnen Williams’ numbers with the Cowboys:
- Williams: 79.0 pass-rush grade, 19.6% pass-rush win rate, 16.4% pressure rate
- Briggs: 89.4 pass-rush grade, 19.4% pass-rush win rate, 13.2% pressure rate
It’s understandably underdiscussed because of how bad the Jets were in 2025, but New York quietly developed a star-caliber defensive tackle in Briggs, yet you rarely hear him come up in discussions about the team.
4. Minkah Fitzpatrick’s versatility
Few NFL players can affect a game in as many ways as Minkah Fitzpatrick. He’s spent stretches of his career as a box safety, free safety, and even a slot corner, and he thrived in all of those areas.
In the middle of his career with the Pittsburgh Steelers, Fitzpatrick almost exclusively sat back as a deep safety. In that role, he took advantage of the opportunity to aggressively pursue deep passes, snagging 17 interceptions from 2019-22.
Since then, Fitzpatrick’s role has crept closer to the line of scrimmage. It’s resulted in a decline in takeaways, but it hasn’t changed Fitzpatrick’s overall impact.
Returning to the Dolphins in 2025, Fitzpatrick logged a career-high 345 slot snaps, doubling his previous career high, and he was a stalwart in the role. On 200 snaps in slot coverage, Fitzpatrick only coughed up 145 yards. Among the 21 safeties with at least 100 snaps in slot coverage, he ranked fourth-best with 0.73 yards allowed per slot coverage snap.
Fitzpatrick’s do-it-all profile allows the Jets to put the rest of their defensive backs in the roles that suit them best. Wherever the Jets need Fitzpatrick to play so that everyone else can be the best versions of themselves, he can be trusted.
Most likely, though, we will see Fitzpatrick return to a single-high free safety role, which should allow him to reignite his interception production. It would be a smart move for the Jets; as much as Fitzpatrick can help a team in subtler ways, such as with slot coverage, his ability to take the ball away is the No. 1 avenue for him to impact winning.
Forcing turnovers should be the Jets’ defensive priority moving forward. So, it stands to reason that they should put their most accomplished takeaway artist in the role that gives him the best opportunity to take the ball away.
3. David Bailey’s explosiveness
This placement is a projection, as David Bailey has yet to prove anything in the NFL. But as a No. 2 overall pick, Bailey should be expected to have a higher ceiling than anyone on the Jets’ roster.
You could pick a number of things about Bailey’s game to pinpoint as his best trait. Ultimately, though, his superstar ceiling stems from his explosiveness. That is what gives him the chance to stockpile game-wrecking plays against NFL competition.
Bailey ran a 4.50 in the forty-yard dash at 250 pounds. Perhaps even more impressively, he registered a 129-inch broad jump, which is another strong indicator of explosiveness.
At Texas Tech, Bailey translated those tools into 14.5 sacks and 81 total pressures this past season.
What sets Bailey apart as a potential superstar is not just his ability to win pass rush reps, but his ability to convert those wins into hits on the quarterback. Of Bailey’s 81 total pressures in 2025, he knocked the quarterback to the ground on 38 of them (23 hits, 15 sacks), a startling 46.9% pressure-to-knockdown rate. For perspective, that is right in the ballpark of Myles Garrett’s 46.4% rate this past season.
Obviously, it’s apples-to-oranges to compare Bailey’s numbers against college teams to Garrett’s numbers against NFL teams. But it goes to show that Bailey has the tools to eventually become the type of NFL pass rusher who racks up big plays, not just pressures.
It all comes back to his explosiveness. The faster an edge rusher can get out of his stance and engage the lineman, the better his chance of hitting the quarterback before the ball gets out.
2. Armand Membou’s run blocking
What Armand Membou accomplished as a 21-year-old, opening-week rookie starter is nothing short of astonishing.
Announcing his presence with a surprisingly stout performance against T.J. Watt, Membou was already one of the NFL’s better starting right tackles in 2025. Given that he was expected to be a high-ceiling, low-floor type of prospect with a steep development curve, it is incredible to think about how high his ceiling could be after seeing what his floor looks like.
Membou thrived in both phases as a rookie, but it’s in the run game where he has the potential to set himself apart as a megastar. With a rare blend of athleticism, strength, and nastiness, Membou is built to pave the road in just about any run concept. Whether it’s outside zone, inside zone, or duo, Membou can handle his assignment. That type of versatility can allow him to build an extensive reel of pancakes.
The Jets project to rely on the run game much less heavily in 2026 than they did in 2025, but the rushing attack will, of course, still be a part of their identity. Running behind No. 70 should be the emphasis.
Membou can open up a plethora of options for Frank Reich. Say the Jets open a game with a handful of chunk gains behind Membou. From there, the opponent will start to overload on his side. Then, the Jets can throw a change-up by running a misdirection play toward the numbers advantage on the left side.
These are the types of competitive advantages that a star offensive tackle can create for his team.
1. Garrett Wilson’s hands
There aren’t many specific numbers you can throw in here to accurately summarize what Garrett Wilson brings to the table. As Jets fans know, his statistics have been bombed by the Jets’ atrocious quarterbacks.
In this case, all we need is the good ole’ eye test. You’ve watched the games. You know the type of plays that Wilson can make.
There isn’t an individual skill on the Jets’ roster that jumps off the screen as much as Wilson’s ability to make seemingly impossible catches. A case could be made that he is the best receiver in the league at catching passes that have no business being caught.
Save for Nwangwu’s kick returning, no other Jet has a particular skill in which he could be argued as the league’s best player in that category.
How exactly do the Jets maximize this skill? Well, the easy answer would be to suggest that they should throw him the ball more, but at this point, Wilson’s target volume is not the problem. Wilson has the sixth-most targets in the NFL since 2022 (528), and that’s with him spending all of 2025 either on the sideline or playing in a run-heavy offense.
What the Jets must do to maximize Wilson’s rare talent is to make his opportunities more favorable, not more frequent.
While Wilson has received a high volume of targets, many of those throws were force-fed to him in low-percentage situations where the defensive look should not have deemed him the right player to throw to. Yet, because the Jets’ receiving options around Wilson have been so poor, the Jets’ coaches and quarterbacks have frequently deferred to forcing the ball to Wilson regardless of how open he is.
This is why, despite having so many targets in his career, he’s only caught 59.7% of them for 6.9 yards per target. As talented as Wilson is, there isn’t much he can do with his targets when so many of them were forced to him against coverages designed to take him out of the play.
The Jets need to create more quality targets for Wilson, not just more targets in general. The only way to accomplish that is to make opponents fear the other players in the passing game.
New York hopes the first-round duo of Kenyon Sadiq and Omar Cooper Jr. will help form the supporting cast that Wilson has never had. If things go according to plan, Wilson will finally enjoy some legitimate opportunities to make plays, allowing his talent to shine in an efficient fashion that we’ve yet to see in his NFL career.
