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On Wednesday morning, Dianna Russini of the New York Times announced that Jets guard Alijah Vera-Tucker suffered an arm injury in practice that might require surgery.
Vera-Tucker is represented by CAA.
While we wait for more guidance from Russini on this matter, it’s fair to assume that the injury is likely a torn biceps or triceps injury, which are very common among football players.
Biceps are the muscles in the front of your arm, and triceps are in the back.
Those muscles do a lot of heavy lifting and moves that involve extensions, so linemen often suffer these injuries while blocking defensive linemen.
This is a tough blow for Vera-Tucker, who, due to no fault of how own, has had trouble staying healthy, suffering season-ending injuries in 2022 (torn triceps) and 2023 (torn Achilles).
And this is a contract year for him, with him playing on his fifth-year option in 2025.
This could potentially harm his ability to secure a lucrative long-term deal from the team in the near future.
Recently, Kansas City Chiefs guard Trey Smith signed Trey Smith sign a 4-year deal for $94 million with $70 million guaranteed.
Vera-Tucker, who has the same agent, would likely have been looking for that kind of deal.
Now, it’s going to be hard for him to get that, at least any time soon.
It’s unclear if Vera-Tucker will be out for the season with this injury. If it’s a biceps or triceps injury, sometimes you can come back from that after three months.
Aside from being unfortunate news for the player him, it’s also a tough blow for Jets’ rookie right tackle Armand Membou, who is learning on the job to a degree.
He loses his veteran partner on the right side, who was of great assistance to him, almost like a north star for the rookie.
The obvious move to make to fill the gap here is to move Joe Tippmann to right guard and plug Josh Myers in at center.
In the Jets’ first preseason game this summer, Tippmann started the game at left guard, with Myers at center, and on a first-quarter touchdown drive, running back Braelon Allen had a 14-yard scamper up the middle. One of the key blocks on this play was Tippmann, playing left guard, locking up defensive tackle Colby Wooden, opening up a big hole.
We have written on a few occasions this summer, before the Vera-Tucker injury, it might be better to start Myers at center and move Tippmann to guard, to take the shotgun snapping responsibility off Tippmann’s plate. Over the last year, in games and in practices, sometimes he seems to have the yips on some of these shotgun snaps. Maybe it’s not the worst idea to take this off his plate and just let him fire off the ball as a guard and not worry about this responsibility. You get the sense sometimes this shotgun snapping issue can prey on Tippmann’s mind and impact his play after the snap.
Let’s be honest, Tippmann could be quite a mauler at right guard, a true road-grader.
Also, Myers was Justin Fields’ center at Ohio State, so they have great chemistry, and we have not seen any of these shotgun issues with Myers snapping to Fields this summer (at least that I saw).
September 3, 2025
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