Content available exclusively for subscribers
After we published our premium story on Monday, the Jets signed two more players, and both will likely start – defensive tackle David Onyemata and safety Dane Belton.
Good luck running up the middle on the Jets with Onyemata and T’Vondre Sweat at defensive tackle.
Expect those two to start.
People who saw Harrison Phillips and Jowon Briggs as starting candidates just weren’t watching the games close enough, perhaps focused more on tweeting during the games.
The Jets’ run defense up the middle last year was bad, with Phillips and Briggs as the starters following the Quinnen Williams trade. It wasn’t any better with Williams.
Phillips and Briggs are perfect #3 and #4 DTs to spell the starters.
It doesn’t matter that Phillips won the media’s good guy award; watch the tape.
Phillips is a fantastic person. He really is. He’s a true gentleman, and few people do more charity work, but he is a good backup DT at this point, and there is nothing wrong with that. You need cats like this to spell the starters. DTs rotate a lot.
Very solid back, as is Briggs. Whatever you think of the Cleveland Browns organization, do you think they are in the business of trading away starting-quality defensive tackles? And while they did not have a great season overall in 2025, they did have a good defense.
So Sweat and Onyemata should start and should be the panacea to fix the Jets’ interior run defense, which was horrid last year, and the entire time Robert Saleh coached the team.
Onyemata is a really good player. There is a reason why Atlanta gave him big money to come over from New Orleans. Excellent run defender. He had 62 tackles last year. To put it in perspective, the highest tackle total Williams ever had with the Jets was 39 in 2023.
NFL Network’s Mike Garafolo announced that Onyemata got a one-year deal for $10.5 million with $9.65 million guaranteed. Why just one year? He turns 34 during the season. But he’s a young 34, starting football late in life, after moving from Nigeria to Canada in 2011. He just moved to go to college, but then football coaches at the Unviersity of Manitoba saw his size, and the rest is history
I would be shocked if the Jets’ interior run defense doesn’t take a quantum leap in 2026 with Sweat and Onyemata starting at defensive tackle.
As for Belton, he could end up starting next to Minkah Fitzpatrick.
From what we saw from Malachi Moore, he’s best served being a #3 or #4 safety or core special teams player.
He needs a lot of work in coverage and should never have been rushed into the starting lineup.
A safety starting 14 games, and having no picks and just 3 PDs is not great.
But you read stuff about this guy, and you would think differently. NFL football is often not well covered.
People were so quick to destroy Steve Wilks for how bad the Jets’ defense was last year, and he should not have been hired as DC, but more assistant head coach/secondary. After one-year-and-out DC gigs in Cleveland and San Francisco, Woody Johnson should never have allowed him to be the team’s DC.
But with that being said, the personnel hand he was dealt last year was bad.
Why do you think the Jets came out of the gate in free agency with myriad defensive signings?
One of the more underrated bad personnel strategies that does not get enough attention was having mid-round rookies like Moore, linebacker Kiko Mauigoa, and defensive end Tyler Baron in key backup roles. None of them was ready. There were reasons why they were picked, where they were, none were instant coffee, and all played too much. That wasn’t on Wilks; that was on his boss. The bad personnel decisions made on defense last year went beyond the starters. Like the backup ends rotating for the starters is a perfect example. That was a big problem.
So the two guys who were signed after I went to press yesterday should both start.
Belton, a fourth-round pick of the Football Giants in 2022, is a better coverage safety right now than Moore. That could change, but as of right now, that is the reality.
As for the Jets trading for Geno Smith, I will comment on that Kabuki Theater on Wednesday.
March 10, 2026
Premium will return by 9:30 pm (or sooner) on Friday.
