The Jets will have another hole to fill on their offensive line.
They are cutting guard Laken Tomlinson after two seasons with the team, the Post confirmed. This move will save the Jets about $8 million in cap space.
The Jets will have three holes to fill on the offensive line after a team that struggled mightily last season with 13 different starting combinations.
Tomlinson signed a three-year, $40 million contract with the Jets ahead of the 2022 season, and was expected to be a key cog and help stabilize the middle of the offensive line.
But even though he has played every game for the past two years for the Ironman, the 32-year-old Tomlinson has struggled to justify his hefty price tag.
His $13.3 million AAV was the 10th highest among all guards in the NFL.
Pro Football Focus gave Tomlinson a dismal 55.0 overall rating last year, ranking him 53rd among all guards.
He allowed seven sacks, 10 quarterback hits and 51 quarterback pressures, according to the paper.
His run blocking was even worse, with a run blocking grade of 49.6.
A first-round pick (28th overall) by the Lions in 2015, Tomlinson spent two years with Detroit and five years with the 49ers, where he emerged as one of the league’s most reliable guards before signing with the Jets. .
Tackles Mekhi Becton and Duane Brown are both free agents and are not expected to return to the Jets, and cutting Tomlinson creates a new void.
The only two offensive linemen currently selected as starters are last year’s second-round pick Joe Tippman and stud Ariya Berra-Tucker.
Tippman will likely play center, where he was used most of last season, and Vera-Tucker could play either guard or tackle, both positions he played with the Jets. .
Vera-Tucker ruptured his Achilles tendon during the Jets’ Week 5 win over the Broncos and said in January he wasn’t sure he would be ready to start next season.
So if Vera-Tucker isn’t ready to play in Week 1, the Jets will have four holes to fill on their offensive line.
Either way, the Jets will need to add at least one, if not two, starting guards this offseason.
Kevin Zeitler, Cody Whitehair, Jon Feliciano, Robert Hunt, and Ezra Cleveland will be among the top guards to hit the open market, and the Jets will have five players available to fill the position in the 2024 NFL Draft. has the right to nominate.
Cutting Tomlinson represents a failure for general manager Joe Douglas, who vowed to fix the offensive line during his 2019 inaugural press conference.
“We’ve invested a lot of resources into that position,” Douglas said at his end-of-season press conference in January. “… We made some decisions there, so we’ll go back to all the decision-making processes. We have some players that are the cornerstones of our offensive line and we’re going to move forward and grow around them and add to the group. I feel like it’s continuing.”
Douglas’ biggest free agent investment on the offensive line has now been cut, five years after that statement, and the Jets find themselves close to square one again in replenishing and improving the unit.
