How would you handle this?
This could end up being a very difficult decision.
Who is going to start at right and left tackle for the New York Jets?
The two leading candidates are Mekhi Becton and Duane Brown.
But who is going to play right tackle, and who will line up on the left side?
Becton has made it clear he wants to play left tackle.
He recently tweeted – “I.am.a.left.tackle.”
Last summer, he was lining up a right tackle early in training camp, before re-injuring his surgical knee early in camp, ending his season.
Becton claimed a big reason why he re-injured his knee was being forced to play right tackle in camp last year.
“It made no sense to put me at right tackle,” Becton told Newsday. “I hurt my right knee. That’s going to be the knee that I put the most pressure on [while backpedaling in pass protection]. I explained it [to the coaches], but no one cared.”
The coach who decides where players play is head coach Robert Saleh. So he was essentially calling out his head coach.
Brown has played left tackle for his entire 16-year NFL career. The last time he played some right tackle was in college at Virginia Tech. It could be hard for him to adjust to the other side this late in his career.
So how is Saleh going to handle this?
“[Brown] is obviously is very comfortable at that left tackle spot,” Saleh said. “There’s guys who can play right and left and just trying to sort it out. We’ll get to all of that as we go, but I have a feeling Duane will be a hard out anyway. He looks good, he’s doing a real nice job, but everything will be taken into consideration once we start to settle in on which five are going to be the five that we roll into the season with.”
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