Jeremy Ruckert doesn’t sound like a man worried about the quarterback room in New York. He sounds like someone who trusts the guy running it.
“He's a warrior, man,” the Jets tight end said of Geno Smith, via ESPN. “He's a field general. We have the utmost confidence in him.”
That confidence has been easy to understand through three games. New York is 1-2 and likely headed for another year outside the playoffs, but Smith has opened his second Jets stint playing sharp, efficient football. He’s thrown for 783 yards, four touchdowns and no interceptions while completing 75.5% of his passes.
The latest example came in the Week 3 loss to the Detroit Lions. Smith was outstanding in defeat, going 31 of 37 for 321 yards and three touchdowns.
Bleacher Report graded the outing as an A-. He also kept the ball out of harm’s way again, continuing a dramatic turnaround from last season, when he led the NFL in interceptions and was, as the source notes, arguably the worst starter in the league with the Las Vegas Raiders.
This version of Smith looks much closer to the quarterback who earned his reputation in Seattle. His best NFL seasons came with the Seahawks in 2022 and 2023, when he made the Pro Bowl both years and won the 2022 AP Comeback Player of the Year award.
Across his career, Smith has compiled 22,168 passing yards, 124 passing touchdowns and 89 interceptions. He enters the Jets’ Week 4 matchup against the Chicago Bears with a 43-58-0 record as a starter.
The Jets’ situation under center still has some noise around it. Some fans want head coach Aaron Glenn to turn to rookie Cade Klubnik at some point this season, and that could happen once New York is officially out of playoff contention.
Klubnik’s preseason line was 21 of 34 for 190 passing yards, with no touchdown passes and one interception. His draft path also took a hit after he entered the 2025 college football season projected as a top pick in the 2026 draft, then struggled along with Clemson. Still, the Jets selected him with the 110th overall pick in the 2026 draft, and he remains confident in his game.
Klubnik finished the 2025 college season with 2,943 passing yards and 16 touchdowns, and his Clemson career ended with 10,123 passing yards and 73 passing touchdowns.
New York heads to Chicago to face a Bears team that is 2-1 after beating the Philadelphia Eagles in Week 3. Caleb Williams may not be in the mix because of a Grade 2 hamstring strain, while Case Keenum stepped in and played well against Philadelphia, throwing for 247 yards, two touchdowns and a rushing score.
One more number hangs over the Jets as they head into Week 4: they still haven’t recorded an interception in the Glenn era. That’s the next box to check in Chicago.
In Other News...
Jets Suddenly Have A Real Nahshon Wright Problem In The Secondary
Nahshon Wrights start with the Jets has gone from low-key to hard to ignore. The veteran cornerback arrived on a $3.5 million guaranteed deal, but early in the season he has barely seen the field, and in a recent game he was a healthy scratch while rookie DAngelo Ponds got his first NFL action. For a team that is always trying to sort out the back end of its defense, that kind of usage says plenty about where Wright stands right now.
The bigger question is what comes next, because the Jets did not bring him in to be an afterthought. When a veteran corner is active in name only and a rookie is already getting a look, it naturally raises concerns about depth, roster construction and whether the team has another awkward cornerback situation developing. It is the sort of subplot that can linger for a while in New York, especially with the memory of former Jet Dmitri Patterson still offering a cautionary comparison. [Read more 🡒]
Jets Early Draft Returns Are Shaping One Big Makai Lemon Debate
The first month of the Jets 2026 draft class has already offered enough to start rethinking the board, especially with the front offices first-round investments at tight end and wide receiver drawing early attention. New York went with Oregon tight end Kenyon Sadiq at No. 16 overall and later added Indiana wideout Omar Cooper Jr. at No. 30, while USC receiver Makai Lemon went to Philadelphia a few spots ahead. With the season only a few games old, the early returns have given the Jets a workable case that their own path made sense.
Sadiqs breakout game, a 100-yard day with a touchdown, has helped steady the conversation, while Cooper has been slowed by injury but has still shown enough to remain part of the picture. Lemon, meanwhile, has had a modest start with the Eagles, and that has only sharpened the debate over whether the Jets should have gone in a different direction. For now, the team appears comfortable with how the draft board fell and how its choices have started to look. [Read more 🡒]
Jets Win Just Took On A Much Darker Meaning For Packers Fans
The Packers Week 2 loss to the Jets carried an added cost beyond the final score, because Jayden Reed is now headed to injured reserve with a neck injury suffered on the second play of that game. For Green Bay, it turns a routine early-season setback into something more serious, as one of its most important pass catchers now faces an extended absence with no return timeline attached.
Reeds absence forces the Packers to reshuffle both their roster and their game plan at a time when they were still settling in offensively. For Jets fans, the win already had the usual satisfaction of a Sunday result, but now it comes with a harsher afterglow for Green Bay, where the injury from that game has become the bigger story. [Read more 🡒]