“Davis returns to New York and will make sure the linebacking is sound,” Pereles wrote. “Fitzpatrick keeps everything in order on the back end and Wright recorded 5 interceptions in 2025.”<\/p>\n
Days before trading QB Justin Fields to Kansas City for a late-round draft pick in 2027, the Green & White brought back Smith and penciled him in as QB1 in his return to the team that drafted him in the second round of the 2013 NFL Draft.<\/p>\n
“The Smith trade is a win, too,” Pereles wrote. “No matter what you think of the quarterback himself, the Jets moved down just 20 spots in the draft [swapping a sixth-round pick for a seventh-round pick coming from the Raiders] and are still only paying a small part of Smith’s salary. He struggled in 2025, but so, too, did the Raiders. He should be at least viable for New York.<\/p>\n
“The Jets show a deep understanding of who they are: a team that first has to get serious in order to build under [head coach] Aaron Glenn after 2025. With a bevy of extra first-round picks on the way [3 in 2027], the Jets are moving in the right direction, even if they’re still a ways from competing.”<\/p>\n
The Rams were the only other NFL team to get a top grade from Pereles.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"“Davis returns to New York and will make sure the linebacking is sound,” Pereles wrote. “Fitzpatrick keeps everything…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":168138,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[63836,85,9,11,10,12],"class_list":["post-168137","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-york","tag-2026-free-agency","tag-latest-headlines","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-headlines","tag-new-york-news","tag-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/168137","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=168137"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/168137\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/168138"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=168137"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=168137"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=168137"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}