The New York Jets should have one clear thought in mind if South Carolina edge rusher Dylan Stewart keeps flashing first-round talent next spring: stay away.
That may sound harsh for a 21-year-old prospect with rare movement skills, but the issue here is bigger than upside. It’s about whether a rebuilding team wants to gamble on a player whose talent has repeatedly come attached to chaos. And for the Jets, that is a dangerous place to wander.
The case for Stewart is obvious enough. Jet Press colleague Mike Luciano still sees a swing worth taking in his latest three-round mock, slotting Stewart to New York at No. 9 despite the recent team-issued suspension. Luciano wrote: “Stewart has unique movement skills, and a lackluster pass rush outside of David Bailey could land a meteoric talent who has 10-year starter potential,” Luciano wrote.
But Stewart’s track record at South Carolina makes that sort of bet look reckless.
Since arriving in 2024, he has already accumulated a string of incidents that make his profile more volatile than your standard edge-rushing prodigy. In a 27-3 loss to Ole Miss in 2024, officials penalized Stewart twice after he pretended to repeatedly shoot an opposing player with a shotgun. Last year against Vanderbilt, he was ejected after shoving Commodores offensive tackle Bryce Henderson in front of an official.
This season brought another escalation. South Carolina suspended Stewart indefinitely after a sideline argument with coach Shane Beamer that went viral. Before that, Stewart had already been flagged for roughing the passer and pushed teammate Julian Walker away when coaches tried to pull him out of the game.
The night also included another flashpoint: Stewart punched Alabama tight end Josh Ford’s helmet, and Ford later said he had been punched three times during the game. Officials did not eject Stewart.
South Carolina later reinstated him after a one-game suspension, and he remains with the program. The Gamecocks are 1-3 in SEC play and could miss a bowl game for the third time in four years.
That’s exactly the kind of background a team like the Jets cannot afford to romanticize. A player’s upside loses a lot of shine when the downside includes ejections, suspensions, and a pattern that suggests the lesson is not sticking. Stewart’s talent is what keeps him on the roster at South Carolina, but that same talent should not blind an NFL team to everything else.
Beamer and South Carolina’s administration also deserve criticism for the way this has been handled. They have kept enabling behavior that already points to a bigger problem, and that is not the kind of environment an NFL team should want to inherit.
The Jets already have enough issues to sort through next spring, with holes across the roster and a possible coaching change hanging over everything. Stewart may tempt a team that wants to bet on his upside. New York should resist the urge and let somebody else carry that burden.
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