{"id":209797,"date":"2026-04-25T22:29:07","date_gmt":"2026-04-25T22:29:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/209797\/"},"modified":"2026-04-25T22:29:07","modified_gmt":"2026-04-25T22:29:07","slug":"db-vj-payne-kansas-state-round-7-pick-228","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/209797\/","title":{"rendered":"DB VJ Payne, Kansas State, Round 7, Pick 228"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>With their final pick in the 2026 NFL Draft, the Jets on Saturday selected Kansas State safety VJ Payne in the seventh round (No. 228 overall).<\/p>\n<p>Payne (6-3 208), a native of Gainesville, GA, was a four-year starter at K-State, earning a starting spot midway through his freshman season. He started a total of 42 games over his four seasons.<\/p>\n<p>Payne has good length (nearly a 34-inch wingspan) and clocked a speedy 4.4 seconds in the 40-yard dash, a 10-7 broad jump and a 35-inch vertical jump at the NFL Combine in February.<\/p>\n<p>He logged a total of 196 tackles during his time with the Wildcats while also contributing 4 forced fumbles.<\/p>\n<p>A dual-sport athlete (also ran track &amp; field) at Buford HS, where he also saw time at linebacker, Payne helped his team to a 14-1 record and a Georgia state championship.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"With their final pick in the 2026 NFL Draft, the Jets on Saturday selected Kansas State safety VJ&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":209798,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[83108,22597,82443,85,9,11,10,49,51,50,12,83109],"class_list":["post-209797","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-york","tag-2026pick228","tag-draft","tag-draft-tracker-card","tag-latest-headlines","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-headlines","tag-new-york-news","tag-new-york-state","tag-new-york-state-headlines","tag-new-york-state-news","tag-news","tag-vj-payne"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/209797","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=209797"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/209797\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/209798"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=209797"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=209797"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=209797"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}