It’s possible Jets’ free agent addition Kingsley Enagbare won’t start, but it’s more likely he will be the Jets’ third defensive end, a player to spell the starters, which happens quite a bit on most NFL defensive lines.
While it’s hard to expect backup ends to be as good as the starters, you want to make sure the dropoff isn’t so significant that when the backups come in, the opposing offense starts rolling due to the lack of a pass rush or proper edge setting.
Anybody who followed the Green Bay Packers closely the last few years will attest to the fact that when Engabare, the team’s 2022 fifth-round pick, came in for the starters, the bottom didn’t drop out on his side of the field.
While he’s not a star player, per se, he’s incredibly consistent and durable.
In fact, he didn’t miss one game in his first four NFL seasons.
He will get you some sacks (11.5 in his career) and QB pressures, but one thing he will do better than any Jets defensive end from last year is set a hard edge against the run.
“He’s also a stout run defender, setting a firm edge,” wrote Packer beat writer Jon Meerdink of the Acme Packing Company website.
He is an excellent run defender, and anybody who watched the Jets’ season finale at Buffalo, where the Bills started four backup offensive linemen and still dominated on the ground, with Bills backup tailback Ray Davis looking like Thurman Thomas, knows the Jets needed reinforcements on their defensive line to fortify their run defense in the trenches.
Enagbare will help them do this (along with the two behemoths they added at DT – T’Vondre Sweat and David Onyemata). Even as a rotational player in Green Bay, he was consistently ranked high among NFL defensive ends in tackling production.
