The New York Jets may have landed their most intriguing draft bargain all the way at the end of the 2026 NFL Draft.
VJ Payne, the former Kansas State safety, came off the board at No. 228 overall even though he checked in at 126th on the consensus board. That kind of gap makes him the kind of seventh-round pick teams dream about, especially when the athletic profile jumps off the page the way his does.
Payne measured 6-foot-3 and 206 pounds and ran a 4.44-second 40-yard dash. He also started 42 games at Kansas State and closed his college career with 41 straight starts. The résumé is long, the tools are obvious, and the reason he slid is pretty clear: his tackling was inconsistent, his ball production was light, and he didn’t bring much special teams experience.
That last part matters right away. Payne enters camp as the fifth safety on a crowded Jets depth chart, with Minkah Fitzpatrick, Malachi Moore, Dane Belton, and Andre Cisco all ahead of him. If he’s going to stick, special teams is the most likely route.
The catch is that he hasn’t done much of that in college. Payne didn’t play a single snap in kick coverage since his freshman year in 2022.
Still, his size, speed, and explosiveness give him a chance to handle that job if he can adjust fast enough. Seventh-rounders don’t usually get much runway if they can’t help on game day.
What does help Payne is the amount of real football he’s already played. He started 42 games across four seasons and earned honorable mention All-Big 12 recognition twice. That kind of durability matters, and it gives the Jets a rookie who has seen plenty of action even if parts of his game still need polish.
The athletic testing is where Payne starts to look like a much earlier pick. His 9.74 Relative Athletic Score puts him in the top two percent of safeties in the database.
At the combine, he paired that 4.44 speed with elite 10- and 20-yard splits and a broad jump that came just shy of 11 feet. Players with that kind of profile do not often last until the seventh round, especially when they also bring more than 40 college starts.
But the film explains why teams hesitated. Payne missed nearly 13 percent of his tackle attempts in college, a real issue for a safety with his size and physical gifts. He also finished with just seven pass breakups over four seasons, which is a modest number for someone with his length and athleticism.
Even so, Day 3 picks are usually about betting on a trait or two that can grow into something more. Payne has size, speed, durability, and a ton of starting experience. He also drew praise before the draft for his work ethic and his willingness to improve.
For the Jets, a successful rookie year probably doesn’t require anything dramatic. If Payne makes the 53-man roster, that would already count as a win.
To get there, he has to become useful on special teams and prove he can handle those assignments despite the limited reps he logged in college. He also has to clean up the tackling. Payne missed over 12 percent of his tackle attempts in college and never had a season with a missed-tackle rate below 10%.
If that doesn’t improve, the Jets won’t have much reason to trust him on defense. If it does, he gives himself a real chance to carve out a role, at least in preseason and maybe later in the year.
The upside is obvious enough: the Jets found a rare athlete with a strong college resume at the very end of the draft. And, yes, VJ Payne does sound like the name of an All-Pro safety.
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