One year after special teams helped define the New York Jets, that edge has disappeared fast.
In 2025, Chris Banjo’s group was one of the few things working in New York. Nick Folk and Austin McNamara handled the kicking and punting work, Isaiah Williams and Kene Nwangwu changed field position in the return game, and the whole operation looked unusually sharp from top to bottom.
That’s why the early-season drop-off in 2026 has stood out. Three games into the year, the Jets’ special teams have not looked anything like last season’s unit, and the most glaring example came in Week 2. Punt coverage allowed a 63-yard return to Skyy Moore of the Green Bay Packers, a swing play in a game New York eventually lost in overtime.
Still, the bigger picture says this shouldn’t be treated like some shocking collapse.
Special teams is one of the hardest phases in football to keep rolling from year to year. A big reason is turnover.
The players who matter most on those units are often the ones at the back of the roster, and those are exactly the kinds of contributors teams have the toughest time keeping around. New York has already lived through that reality: seven of its top 15 special teams players in snaps from last season are gone.
The Jets are also dealing with injuries that have forced Banjo to keep rearranging the deck. Kiko Mauigoa has been out with a quadriceps injury, Marcelino McCrary-Ball is on injured reserve, and both were important pieces on special teams. Kene Nwangwu, the team’s top kick returner, hasn’t played this season at all because of a back injury.
And unlike offense or defense, special teams doesn’t come with some tidy, dependable formula that guarantees year-to-year consistency. A lot of it simply swings with the bounce of the ball.
That helps explain why the Jets have fallen all the way to 28th in FTN Fantasy’s special teams DVOA. The Packers game looms large in that number, especially after the fourth-quarter return that helped turn a game New York had a real chance to win.
Even so, the Jets have already shown there’s still some life here. In Week 1 against the Tennessee Titans, they led the NFL in special teams EPA, and Tennessee was one of the league’s better special teams teams last season.
The coverage units and punting have not been nearly as crisp, and McNamara has not matched the standard set last year. But the Jets have at least gotten something solid from kicker, which was supposed to be a concern after the offseason decision to let Nick Folk leave.
That move looked strange at the time, but early returns have favored New York. Jason Sanders has been better than Folk so far.
Folk, who led the NFL in field goal percentage from 2023-25, has made only five of eight field goal attempts with the Atlanta Falcons, a 62.5% rate, and missed two kicks in Week 1. Sanders has hit five of six field goals for the Jets, including two from 50-plus yards, despite an ugly Week 1 miss from 54 yards.
The bar for New York now is simple: get back to being average, or close to it. Another historic season was always going to be a lot to ask, and the slide from first to 28th has already mattered in a real way. Special teams helped win games for the Jets a year ago, and some could argue it helped buy Aaron Glenn a second season as head coach.
At the moment, this doesn’t look like that same unit. But it also shouldn’t come as a major surprise.
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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 🡒]