David Bailey doesn’t need a long runway to make noise in the NFL. One game, one matchup, and the Jets rookie already has a clear path to a splash play against the Tennessee Titans.
The number he’d be chasing is a pretty exclusive one. The last time a New York Jets first-round pick recorded a full sack in his NFL debut was all the way back in 2000, when Shaun Ellis did it against the Green Bay Packers.
Ellis, the 12th overall pick that year out of Tennessee, strip-sacked Brett Favre in the second quarter of a 20-16 Jets win at Lambeau Field. To this day, he’s the only Jets first-round pick to post a full sack in his NFL debut, and the only Jets player of any draft status to log a strip-sack in his NFL debut.
Bailey gets his first shot at joining that club Sunday against a Titans front that sets up well for him. In two preseason games, the Jets aligned him on the left side of the defensive line - opposite the right tackle - on all but one of his 20 defensive snaps. If that usage carries into the regular season, his main assignment will be Tennessee right tackle JC Latham.
Latham, the No. 7 pick in the 2024 draft out of Alabama, spent his rookie season at left tackle before moving to the right side in 2025. He started all 13 of his appearances there and, according to Pro Football Focus, turned in a respectable year overall with a 65.5 grade that ranked 20th among 32 qualified right tackles. But the stat sheet tells a messier story.
Latham was hit with 14 penalties, the most in the NFL, and tied for second among right tackles with eight sacks allowed, per PFF. That’s a rough total on its own, and it becomes even more striking when you break it down by game: 0.62 sacks allowed per outing, which would project to 10.5 over a 17-game season.
His pass-blocking grade was better than that sack total suggests, though. PFF gave him a 68.0 mark in pass protection, 18th out of 32 qualified right tackles.
The bigger issue was what was happening behind him. Cam Ward held the ball for an average of 3.00 seconds in his rookie season, giving pass rushers plenty of time to close. And once pressure arrived, Ward turned a troubling share of those plays into sacks, with 23.9% of pressured dropbacks ending that way, third-highest among qualified quarterbacks.
That helps explain why Latham’s sack number looks so inflated compared with his pass-blocking grade. He wasn’t a disaster snap to snap.
But when pressure got there, the result often turned into a sack anyway. The Jets saw a similar pattern with Justin Fields, who had an even longer time-to-throw at 3.09 seconds and a comparable 23.3% pressure-to-sack rate.
That’s part of why Armand Membou gave up eight sacks despite posting a solid 73.8 pass-blocking grade, 11th-best among right tackles.
Latham’s line also included just one quarterback hit. So of the nine times he saw the quarterback hit the ground, eight were sacks rather than hits. That’s a quarterback problem as much as a blocker problem, because once a rusher gets through, the finish often depends on what the quarterback does next.
For Bailey, the takeaway is straightforward: win the rep, and the sack should follow.
And if he does get home, there’s a chance it becomes more than just a first-career sack. Ward had a major ball-security problem as a rookie, leading the NFL with 11 fumbles and losing seven of them, also the most in the league.
Ten of those 11 fumbles came on sacks, which worked out to 0.59 strip-sacks per game. In other words, if a defender got Ward on the ground, there was a real chance the football would come loose too.
That makes Bailey a dangerous first opponent for the young quarterback. The Jets rookie led the country with 14.5 sacks in 2025, and in the preseason he needed only 11 pass-rush snaps to notch a solo sack. With his burst off the line and top-end speed, he has the kind of closing power that can turn one clean win into a game-changing play.
He also comes in with a history of taking the ball away. Bailey forced eight fumbles over his final two college seasons, another reason Sunday could be a big one if he finds the edge early against Latham and Ward.
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