Very few NFL players are lucky enough to be assured of a starting spot on the roster year in and year out. You have your Lamar Jacksons and Justin Jeffersons who will never need to worry about an upstart rookie taking their jobs, but most NFL players go into training camp every year knowing that there’s at least a decent chance that they could slide down the depth chart.
That’s where New York Jets center Joe Tippmann now finds himself: in a battle for the starting role. In speaking to the media before training camp this week, he admitted to being taken by surprise when the Jets signed center Josh Myers, who spent the last four years with the Green Bay Packers, but that head coach Aaron Glenn had called to explain the situation to him after the news broke. Instead of sulking and complaining, Tippmann is embracing the challenge.
Myers, who was recently picked by ESPN as New York’s ‘nonstarter to know’, was drafted in the second round of the 2021 NFL draft but hasn’t quite lived up to his draft status yet. There’s a reason the Packers allowed his rookie contract to expire without an extension, after all. His grade at Pro Football Focus decreased every season, finishing 2024 with a rough grade of 55.7, or 46th out of 64 eligible centers.
However, that doesn’t mean he’s not a threat to Tippmann. Sometimes, all a player needs is a change of scenery to live up to their potential, and Myers is still full of potential. He wasn’t the second center to be drafted from his class for no reason. Additionally, he has the advantage of having worked with quarterback Justin Fields (who narrowly escaped a major injury in Thursday’s practice) in the past. Tippmann and Fields both played at Ohio State in college, overlapping for two years.
For now, Tippmann is clearly the superior center and will likely retain his starting job, but it’s good to see him taking this job seriously. For the Jets to finally find success in 2025, they need everyone to pull together and not to take anything for granted. The Jets are being counted out already, and that should fuel them to prove the critics wrong.
