Last season, the Jets defense had one of their worst years in recent memory.
Aside from schematic issues, there were significant personnel problems – one being, to borrow a baseball phrase, they were not “strong up the middle.”
In baseball, it’s important to have strong defense up the middle – catcher, shortstop, second base, and center field. These positions tend to handle a big chunk of the defensive action.
Baseball teams that are “strong up the middle” often perform better. Obviously, there are other factors, but being strong up the middle in baseball is a solid spine for any team and contributes to success.
The 2025 Jets defense wasn’t good up the middle, and that problem was quite illustrative in the last five games of the year, all blowout losses for Gang Green.
“The spine of your team, right up the middle,” draft analyst Daniel Jeremiah said on the Bootleg Football Podcast. “The importance of intelligence, character, leadership, the closer you get to the middle of the field.”
Jeremiah feels if you don’t have the right green-dot inside linebacker and safeties, you are asking for trouble.
“If you make exceptions for a safety who is not really smart or falling in love with an off-the-ball linebacker who is super rangy and athletic, but he’s not a good communicator and helps the guys next to him,” Jeremiah said. “I think teams drift off that line a little bit.”
Clearly, they learned from their personnel mistakes up the middle from last year and made some power moves this off-season to help fix it.
They added two massive top-shelf run defenders in defensive tackles T’Vondre Sweat and David Onyemata to help fix their leaky run defense up the middle. There were too many runs up the middle where it looked like Moses had parted the Red Sea for the running back.
They added a savvy middle linebacker in Damario Davis, and a highly instinctive ball-hawk at safety in Minkah Fitzpatrick to run their deep patrol. He has 21 career interceptions in his eight-year NFL career.
So now the Jets should be “stronger up the middle” on defense than last year.
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