The New York Jets will see not only their former head coach when they take the field in Nashville this Sunday, but also a plethora of their former players, specifically on defense.
The Tennessee Titans’ 53-man roster features five defenders who played under Robert Saleh with the Jets.
Of those five, there are two, in particular, who the Jets would be wise to target in their offensive game plan: edge rushers Jermaine Johnson and Jacob Martin.
How the Jets can exploit their former edge rushers in Tennessee
Johnson needs no introduction to Jets fans. The team traded up to land him in the first round of the 2022 draft.
The Florida State product enjoyed two productive seasons with the team, including a Pro Bowl nod in 2023, before his third season ended with an Achilles injury in Week 2 (suffered in Nashville, ironically). Johnson returned healthy in 2025 but did not look like the same player. After the year, New York traded him to Tennessee for defensive tackle T’Vondre Sweat.
Martin is a more obscure name. He spent a half-season with the Jets as a situational pass rusher in 2022, logging eight appearances (1.5 sacks, 8 tackles, one forced fumble) before the Jets traded him to the Denver Broncos for a pick swap (2024 fifth-round for 2024 fourth-round).
The Martin trade was not an inconsequential one. After later being traded alongside a 2024 sixth-round pick (218th overall), the pick received for Martin yielded offensive tackle Morgan Moses and running back Braelon Allen.
Both of these former Jets edge rushers are projected to play crucial roles in Sunday’s season opener. On the Titans’ unofficial depth chart, Johnson and Martin are listed as the starting defensive ends.
That presents New York with a clear game plan on the ground: run the ball outside.
As Jets X-Factor’s Connor Long detailed, the Jets are facing a tough matchup on the inside, where their interior offensive line will match up with superstar defensive tackle Jeffery Simmons. The three-time All-Pro tied for 10th at his position with 27 run stops last season and ranked third with 34 in 2024.
Simmons could easily wreck the Jets’ interior run game, especially when he draws matchups against center Josh Myers, who is the weak link in the Jets’ offensive line. It’s never a good idea to attack the spot of the line where your worst lineman is matched up with the opponent’s best run defender.
Therefore, the Jets should focus on running outside, where their matchups will be much more appealing.
Johnson and Martin both carry significant questions in the run game. If they are on the field together, the Jets will have a chance to run the ball successfully to either side of the line.
While Johnson was known as a strong run defender over the first two years of his career, he has a lot to prove in that phase after a rough year in 2025. Not looking like himself in his first year after an Achilles tear, Johnson posted a 58.4 run defense grade at Pro Football Focus, ranking 63rd out of 85 qualified edge rushers. His 4.1% run-stop rate placed 70th; he had just 11 run stops in 14 games.
With another year of recovery under his belt, Johnson has the potential to bounce back and re-emerge as a quality edge-setter this year, but Martin does not have the same upside. He has always been known as a player who can get after the quarterback but is a liability against the run. For his career, he owns a composite run defense grade of 57.1 at PFF.
Tackling is a particularly major issue for Martin. He owns a career missed tackle rate of 27.9%, which is horrid; the 2025 league average for edge rushers was 16.0%.
With the Simmons-versus-Myers matchup looming on the inside, the Jets would be wise to build their ground-attack game plan around targeting Johnson and Martin. See if Johnson can hold up any better than he did last year. Challenge Martin to make tackles. These would be much stronger bets than asking Myers to handle Simmons at the point of attack.
The Jets should have a particularly juicy matchup to the right side.
In the preseason, Johnson lined up on the right side of the defense (across from the LT) on 92% of his snaps, while Martin primarily played on the left side (across from the RT), lining up over there on 65% of his snaps.
If this split holds up on Sunday, it means that Martin, who is certainly the more provably weak run defender of the two, will primarily match up against Jets right tackle Armand Membou—the highest-ceiling run-blocker on the Jets’ entire offensive line.
On the other side, the matchup between Johnson and left tackle Olu Fashanu will be a fascinating one. Fashanu has always been better known for his pass blocking than his run blocking, but if Johnson is still the caliber of run defender that he was in 2025, it’s a matchup that Fashanu should be expected to win in Year 3, as he looks to finally live up to his billing as the 11th overall pick.
Either way, the matchups on the outside will be much better than on the inside. Whether it’s Fashanu versus Johnson or Membou versus Martin, the Jets would be wise to target these matchups as much as possible. At the very least, it will minimize Simmons’ opportunities to wreck plays.
On top of the player-versus-player matchups, it is also important to consider the schematic weaknesses of Robert Saleh’s defense.
Jets fans know what a Saleh defense looks like. It’s spread out, features vanilla looks, and lets the players play instead of asking them to think too much. The benefit is that explosive athletes can maximize their gifts and get after the quarterback with reckless abandon. The downside is that gap integrity in the run game is often compromised.
This becomes most glaring on the edge.
Take a look at the 2025 San Francisco 49ers defense, which Saleh coordinated. They were decent at stopping runs between the tackles, but if teams ran outside on them, they were gashed.
No matter who lines up on the edge in a Saleh defense, they will be vulnerable in the run game, as the scheme asks them to fire off the ball and get downhill without thinking, rather than read and react. That naturally creates gaping holes to the outside.
Toss in the fact that Johnson and Martin have their own individual concerns as run defenders, and the Jets’ outside run game is poised for tremendous success on Sunday.
Running back Breece Hall is the ideal player to take advantage. When he gets the chance to build a head of steam on outside runs, he is one of the game’s premier home-run threats.
Since entering the league in 2022, Hall has recorded six rushes for 30+ yards on carries directed toward the “left end” or the “right end”, per the official play-by-play, tying Saquon Barkley and Justin Fields for the fourth-most in the league.
Hall has an opportunity to record his seventh career carry of that variety on Sunday, and it could be straight through a gap vacated by one of his former teammates.
