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It just doesn’t stop . . .
A couple of weeks ago, Mekhi Becton tweeted, “I. AM. A. LEFT. TACKLE!!!”
Robert Saleh said in a press conference shortly after this tweet, “Go earn the left tackle.”
WFAN’s Boomer Esiason, a former Jets QB, ripped into Becton for this tweet (which he took down).
“You haven’t earned one thing since you’ve been here – you almost basically ate yourself out of the league,” Esiason said.
Just as that distraction faded a little, Becton is at it again, in an interview with a writer who is friendly with his agent, he blamed the Jets for his knee injury 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.”
Is it possible he re-injured his knee because he was carrying a tremendous amount of weight on it?
How much did Becton weigh in camp last year, it’s hard to say exactly, but it’s been well-documented that he has lost 50 pounds, and is now around 342 pounds.
So if that is case, he was probably somewhere in the high 300s last summer, not ideal for a lineman coming off knee surgery.
He also didn’t seem to be in very good shape last summer when he reported. Part of this might have been connected to him not attending the team’s off-season conditioning program.
And honestly, the way he looked last summer, he was built like a right tackle. Let’s give him the benefit of the doubt and says he was 370, you just don’t see a lot of 370-pound left tackles, protecting a QBs blindside. Generally left tackles are a little lighter than right tackles, because of the protection of the blindside. You often see the bigger, road grader at right tackle, getting that great push in the run game.
So seeing him on the field last summer, up close, he totally looked like a right tackle.
Robert Saleh was asked on Tuesday about Becton’s comments about the decision to play him at right tackle last summer.
“Whatever happened in the past, happened in the past,” Saleh said. “It’s not about finger-pointing. It’s about moving forward.”
So true, but the player needs to be on board with that also.
People talk so much about culture. How does a quote like this help your culture?
In fact, stuff like tweeting what position you should play, and ripping the coaches for where they played you last year, are both bad culture moves.
There is no way around it.
And this idea of blaming the coaches. who are you talking about? Offensive line coach John Benton, who was fired after the season?
Saleh?
It has to be Saleh because he’s the head coach, and Benton isn’t going to move Becton to right tackle without his approval.
And Joe Douglas was probably involved as well. Yes, Saleh decides who plays on game day and where, but for a decision of this magnitude, involving a first-round pick coming off a knee injury, you know darn well Douglas was in on the conversation that led to this move. And remember, Douglas is one of the best offensive line evaluators in the league, and played offensive tackle in college. Of course, he was in on this conversation.
So when Becton says, “It made no sense to put him at right tackle” he is criticizing Saleh and Douglas, the top two decision-makers.
Some teams would trade a player after saying something like this.
Obviously the Jets aren’t going to do that, but perhaps this kind of stuff contributed to them not picking up his fifth-year option.
*Aaron Rodgers tweaked his calf today. It’s not serious. We will get into this more tomorrow.
May 23, 2023
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