Despite the unfortunate circumstances surrounding C.J. Mosley’s decision to voluntarily opt-out of the 2020 season, an opportunity has been created for Avery Williamson.
While Williamson was already going to get a chance to make the Jets in training camp, Mosley’s absence all but assures he will.
If Williamson can return to his pre-ACL injury form, he will be the Jets’ best middle linebacker. He is also someone who can call New York’s defensive signals, something he did during his first season with the Jets before Mosley arrived last year.
“I definitely want to go in being a leader on the defense and just knowing that I’m going to make plays,” Williamson told the team website. “That’s what I did my first year with the Jets and I’m ready to continue that. Once we get back as a group, just going out in camp and proving myself again and showing them that I still have that same fire and the same ability to make those big plays.”
The Jets have a motivated Williamson on their hands, someone who has extra incentive to prove that he can return to the player he was in 2018. During his first season in green and white, Williamson compiled a career-high 120 combined tackles, three sacks, one interception, six pass breakups and two forced fumbles.
Since entering the NFL in 2014, Williamson has tallied 154 run stops, which ranks sixth-most among linebackers in that span, according to Pro Football Focus. During the 2018 season, Williamson had PFF’s fourth-highest run defense grade for linebackers and finished with the second-highest tackling grade among linebackers. That’s a lot more than New York can ask from backups like Neville Hewitt and James Burgess.
With Gang Green already having considerable depth in the middle of the field, Williamson appeared to be a likely cap casualty, saving the Jets $6.5 million in cap space. Now, he may be the one to fill Mosley’s shoes.
Former general manager Mike Maccagnan’s plan to have a 1-2 punch of Mosley and Williamson in the field never came to fruition. Williamson’s 2019 season was over before it started after he injured his ACL on a fluke play in a preseason game. Mosley, meanwhile, played just three-quarters of healthy football for Gang Green in 2019 before succumbing to a severe groin injury that required offseason surgery. Now, New York won’t see Mosley until 2021 and Williamson is in a contract year.
The major question will be how healthy Williamson is. He’s been rehabbing from for the past 11 months and was recently placed on the team’s Physically Unable to Perform list. If all things go well, he should be ready to go later this month.
Once he takes the field, there will be a little less pressure on him to perform with Mosley gone.