The 2025 NFL season is expected to be a make or break year for a few different members of the New York Jets. Quarterback Justin Fields, who signed a two-year deal with the team in March, can be easily moved by the team after this season if he doesn’t elevate the squad. Running back Breece Hall, on the other hand, was widely expected to be traded by the new Aaron Glenn regime. But he’s still with Gang Green and, headed into a contract year, will seek to prove that the Jets were right to keep him.
But it might be an uphill battle for Hall to make that kind of statement, if the latest running back rankings from Pro Football Focus are accurate. Dalton Wasserman of PFF ranked each team’s running back room and he placed the Jets squarely in the middle at 17th overall.
This is what Wasserman had to say about Breece Hall and company: “The Jets’ running back unit appears to be at a crossroads with Breece Hall entering the final year of his rookie contract. Hall has flashed brilliance throughout his career but turned in a career-low 62.0 PFF overall grade last season due to issues with fumbles and drops. Braelon Allen showed some promise as a rookie, posting an 82.0 PFF rushing grade. Fellow rookie Isaiah Davis earned a 76.6 PFF rushing grade, though he took just 30 carries.”
It’s certainly not a bad ranking, but it doesn’t exactly sound too promising. If this ends up being more or less correct, than Hall would have likely once again underperformed expectations and we would see a regression from Allen.
However, I think Wasserman is missing an important piece of the Jets’ running game, and that would be quarterback Justin Fields. Arguably the best rushing quarterback not named Lamar Jackson, Fields is a major threat with his legs, and every defensive coordinator in the NFL knows it. We’ve seen him score on runs of 40 yards, 50 yards, even 61 yards in what was one of the most electric highlights of the 2022 NFL season.
Perhaps even more important than Fields’ on-field contributions will be the influence of head coach Aaron Glenn and offensive coordinator Tanner Engstrand. Both come from Detroit, having spent the last couple of years with Ben Johnson, who designed and coordinated one of the most dominant rushing attacks in the NFL. Surely they picked up a thing or two from the now-head coach of the Chicago Bears.
It’d behoove Jets fans to keep expectations for this running back room limited, but if Engstrand and Glenn can bring some of that Detroit magic over to New York, and if Fields has a bounce-back year of his own, we could be seeing the start of something really special.
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