While there weren’t many positives from the New York Jets’ 3-14 season in 2025, the emergence of Jowon Briggs was certainly one of them.

After being acquired in August for a late-round pick swap, Briggs put together an excellent 2025 campaign. His acquisition turned out to be arguably Darren Mougey’s best move that year.

Now, Briggs is entering his second season with the team and his first full year without Quinnen Williams, who was traded at the 2025 trade deadline.

However, to begin the season, he won’t have an easy matchup.

Briggs’ tough battle

According to Pro Football Focus, Briggs aligned against the opposing left guard on 230 of his 588 snaps (39.1%), the most for him at any single position.

The Tennessee Titans, Gang Green’s Week 1 opponent, also happen to have one of the league’s best left guards in Peter Skoronski, who just signed a four-year, $100 million contract extension.

For the 2025 season, Skoronski ranked sixth among 81 qualified guards in PFF’s overall grade with a 79.0 mark, while his even better 84.5 pass-blocking clip finished second at the position.

What makes this battle interesting is that Briggs was among the league’s best interior pass rushers in 2025, and Skoronski is one of the best in the game at countering that element.

Out of 96 qualified defensive tackles, Briggs finished the 2025 season ranked eighth in PFF’s signature statistic, “Pass Rushing Productivity” (PRP). Essentially, the rating measures pressure per snap, with sacks weighted twice as heavily.

For the season, the former Cleveland Brown’s 85.6 pass-rushing grade from PFF ranked fourth among 134 qualified DTs, while he collected 28 solo tackles, four sacks, a forced fumble, six QB hits, and 38 total pressures throughout the year.

Once again, that is for the entire season, including the first half, when Briggs was used in a rotational role. After Williams was traded, his game reached new heights. Through Weeks 10-18, Briggs earned an 8.3 PRP, which was fifth-best over that period. It was also just 0.3 points behind six-time All-Pro Chris Jones.

Briggs’ progress this season will be interesting to monitor. We will see if last year was just a fluke and he comes down to earth, or if he really has what it takes to be an elite-level pass-rushing DT.

It’ll be intriguing to see how he fares against Skoronski. He won’t be going up against the 25-year-old every single snap, but his alignment tendencies from last year suggest that he will have a fair number of reps against the guard.

Fellow Jets IDL T’Vondre Sweat has a much more favorable matchup against Titans center Austin Schlottmann, as our own Michael Nania dissected. If Sweat can take care of business and Briggs can make a statement against Skoronski, Gang Green will be in a very solid position.

Sweat and Briggs also have complementary play styles. Sweat, at 6-foot-4 and 366 pounds, is a big, space-eating presence who dominates against the run. Briggs, on the other hand, is more of a 3-technique defensive tackle who has shown more as a pass rusher than a run stopper.

If both players end up delivering, the Jets can dominate where games are won and lost: the trenches.