Will McDonald IV is still with the Jets, and the deadline passed with the team choosing not to move the edge rusher after he asked for a trade.
McDonald met with reporters at his locker Wednesday, a day after the deadline, and said he wanted to make one thing clear.
“I just want to clear everything up, you know,” McDonald said, according to The Associated Press. “There’s no hard feelings with the coaches and staff or anybody here. I just want to play and I just want to help the team win.”
When asked why he requested a trade, McDonald pointed to his lack of playing time.
That part of the story has been building for a while. McDonald played 66% of New York’s defensive snaps in each of the last two seasons, but that number has dropped to 46% through nine games this year, according to the team’s website. He has three sacks after posting 10.5 in 2024 and eight the year before.
The shift in role comes with the Jets moving to a 3-4 defense this season. They also added Joseph Ossai and Kingsley Enagbare in free agency and drafted David Bailey second overall. Ossai is injured, and McDonald was on the field for 23 snaps in Sunday’s 35-12 loss at Kansas City.
“It is quite frustrating, but you know, it is what it is,” McDonald said Wednesday.
Sources told ESPN there had been interest from other teams before Tuesday’s 4 p.m. ET deadline, but the Jets held onto him. McDonald is under contract through 2027.
Head coach Aaron Glenn made it clear again that the team had no intention of dealing him. He had already said Monday the Jets would “stand pat” at the deadline, and he repeated that stance Wednesday.
“I was very on point when I said, ‘Listen, we’re not trading Will,’” Glenn said, per the team’s website. “Will’s a huge part of what we’re doing.
It’s my job to make sure that I continue to put him in positions to help this team be successful. Obviously, there’s some things he needs to improve on.”
The deadline review from Jets X-Factor’s Michael Nania wasn’t kind to the decision to keep McDonald. He gave that move an F+, even if the offers were smaller than reported.
Nania’s harshest mark, an F, was reserved for the scenario reported by the New York Post: a second-round pick offered for McDonald and turned down. That offer has not been confirmed.
ESPN’s pre-deadline estimate of McDonald’s value was a fourth- or fifth-round pick.
The Jets did make one move, and it earned a better grade. They sent safety Andre Cisco to the Detroit Lions for a sixth-round pick, a trade Nania graded B+. Initial reports, including ESPN’s Adam Schefter’s, listed the pick as a 2028 selection, though Nania has it as 2029.
Cisco, 26, was in the final year of his contract and had been benched in Sunday’s 35-12 loss at Kansas City, according to Jets Wire. Detroit entered at 6-2. Jets Roundtable first reported the trade Monday.
Elsewhere, nothing else materialized. Breece Hall and Garrett Wilson stayed put, and The Jet Press reported that nothing came together for cornerback Nahshon Wright.
Glenn is now 5-21 as head coach, and the 2-7 Jets are set to host the 7-1 Buffalo Bills on Sunday.
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