Making Moves

 By Eddie Castro

With a week of the NFL free agency in the books, the Jets roster for the upcoming 2019 campaign is starting to take shape. The team’s primary goal was to put a respectable product on the field and build around their young quarterback in Sam Darnold. For the first time in a long time, the franchise decided to spend their money exclusively around their offense, which ranked one of the worst last year. With over $100 million dollars, the question was how will the Jets go about upgrading their roster?

In the recent past since General Manager Mike Maccagnan has taken over the position, he has shown a significant effort in trying to upgrade the team on the defensive end, something that was appealing to then-Head Coach Todd Bowles. Now with a more offensive-minded head coach in Adam Gase, the team addressed many needed positions. They quickly made moves to accommodate the offense by signing wide receiver Jamison Crowder to go with the receiving core of Quincy Enunwa and Robby Anderson. The team also signed a few guards to protect Darnold’s blindside. With all the dealing the Jets were doing, it is safe to say that they were able to catch the biggest fish of them all in this free agent class as the team was able to come to terms by signing the dynamic former Pittsburgh Steelers running back Le’Veon Bell. Bell signed a 4-year/$52 million-dollar deal. He provides many talents at his position and will take a load off of the young quarterback. The Jets continued their spending spree on the defensive side by signing former Baltimore Raven C.J. Mosley.

Although the Jets may still not have the pieces of a playoff-caliber team, it will be quite the surprise if they do not improve from their abysmal 4-12 last-place finish from last year. Unfortunately for Gang Green, they are still in the same division (AFC East) as Tom Brady. The Jets still have a pretty good window to build around Darnold while they have him at a good price and with three more years in his rookie deal. The hope is that the $100 million that the organization invested to these players will indeed provide a beginning to what they hope will finally be a winning culture for Jets fans to be proud of.

Sports Notes: (Baseball) BREAKING NEWS! Outside of New York sports for a second as with just a little over a week to go until the start of the 2019 season, a record-breaking contract took place for Los Angeles Angels’ center fielder Mike Trout by finalizing a 12-year/ $430 million-dollar deal which will go down as the largest contract in professional sports history!