The Jets got busy on waivers after Sunday’s roster cutdowns, claiming kicker Blake Grupe and linebacker Trevin Wallace. Grupe will battle Jason Sanders for the kicking job, while Wallace has a shot to become the team’s LB3 in Week 1.
But even after those moves, one obvious problem still sits on the depth chart: interior offensive line depth.
That issue has lingered all offseason. New York was content to head into the summer with Xavier Newman and sixth-round rookie Anez Cooper as its main backups inside, and that plan quickly unraveled. Newman was waived in final cuts and landed on the practice squad, while Cooper was put on short-term injured reserve after suffering a shoulder injury in the preseason finale.
For a stretch, one of the openings was patched by Kohl Levao, a fifth-year, 28-year-old former UDFA who has never played a regular-season snap. But Levao was released to make room for the waiver claims of Grupe and Wallace.
The Jets did at least solve one part of the problem by trading for former Raiders lineman Jordan Meredith. He arrives with 20 career starts and immediately becomes New York’s best backup interior lineman, even if Newman and Cooper had both survived the cuts.
The wrinkle is that Meredith’s value doesn’t look equal at both spots. He has starting experience at guard and center - nine starts at guard and 11 at center - but the numbers tell a pretty clear story about where he’s been stronger.
According to Pro Football Focus, Meredith posted an 80.8 overall grade as a guard in 2024, sixth among NFL guards with at least 500 snaps. That put him one spot behind Indianapolis Colts star Quenton Nelson.
At center, though, the picture was far less flattering. As the Raiders’ opening-week starter at the position in 2025, Meredith earned a 57.7 overall grade, which ranked 29th out of 34 qualified centers.
That’s why the Jets can say he has the experience to handle either job, but the smarter read is to view him primarily as a guard. New York seems willing to trust him in either spot, especially after moving on from Newman, who had been projected as the backup center. Still, the data points in one direction.
And the Jets still need another body in this room before the season starts.
Right now, Meredith is the only backup interior lineman on the roster. Max Mitchell and Chukwuma Okorafor are also among the eight offensive linemen on the 53-man roster, but Mitchell’s limited guard work was described as abysmal, so he should not be counted on as part of the interior answer.
That leaves New York in a position where another true backup-quality center would make sense. Newman is on the practice squad and could be elevated in an emergency, but that’s not the kind of depth a team wants to lean on.
There is some flexibility if Josh Myers goes down. Joe Tippmann, the right guard, was drafted as a center and has 27 career starts there, so the Jets could move him to center and slide Meredith to right guard. On paper, that might give them the better overall offensive line.
But it would also mean shuffling two spots instead of one. Dylan Parham would be working next to a new center, Armand Membou would be next to a new right guard, and Tippmann would be taking on a different job with more mental responsibility. That kind of domino effect could disrupt the whole unit just because the Jets don’t have a center they trust behind Myers.
So even with Meredith on the roster, the need remains. He may be a high-level backup guard. The question is whether he can really be counted on as a high-level backup center.
There’s reason to be skeptical. Meredith was the communicative leader of a Raiders offensive line that was porous for the first 11 games.
And the Raiders themselves didn’t exactly treat center like a solved problem, giving Tyler Linderbaum the largest contract in history for the position and then still spending a third-round pick on Trey Zuhn III, a college tackle who projects as an NFL center. Meredith was released after that.
He also doesn’t have a long center background. He played zero collegiate snaps at center and didn’t log an NFL regular-season snap there until 2025.
So the cleanest takeaway is this: Meredith looks like a solid backup guard and a shaky-to-adequate backup center. If the Jets want to treat him as a plug-and-play answer at all three interior spots, they’d be leaning hard on optimism.
For now, they still need to take the backup center situation seriously.
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