Mason Taylor doesn’t need a lecture on opportunity. He just needs to turn the one sitting in front of him into something bigger.
The Jets tight end already knows what it feels like to find the end zone once. As a rookie, his only touchdown came on a pass from running back Breece Hall, even though he finished with 44 catches. That’s the part Taylor and the Jets are trying to change now, with Geno Smith in the building and Frank Reich bringing the kind of offensive mindset that has long favored tight ends in the passing game.
“It’s going to be exciting,” Taylor said. “A bunch of playmakers in that room, in the run game, in the pass, and it’s going to be a problem for defenses.”
Taylor has backed up the buzz with actual production in camp. With Kenyon Sadiq still working his way back from a hernia, Taylor picked up more first-team snaps and made them count.
According to The Athletic, he caught 17 passes from Smith during team drills, which ranked third among the Jets’ projected starters. Among tight ends, he was far and away the most active, and he finished with just one fewer catch than breakout star Adonai Mitchell, who was arguably New York’s best offensive player.
That workload makes sense for a few reasons. Smith and Taylor spent part of the summer training together in South Florida, and Jeremy Ruckert is expected to serve primarily as an inline blocker.
There’s also no guarantee the coaching staff will force targets to Sadiq just because he was a first-round pick. Reich and Aaron Glenn don’t have the kind of job security that invites that sort of shortcut, and the same logic applies elsewhere on the roster, where Omar Cooper Jr. is not a near-lock to out-target Isaiah Williams despite Williams’ strong offseason.
Still, the real question is how much Smith leans on Taylor once the games count. Mitchell and Garrett Wilson are going to command attention, and the Jets don’t look like a team that will lean heavily on running backs as receivers.
“I loved the way he attacked this training camp, not just from a [receiving] aspect, but also from a blocking aspect,” Glenn said of Taylor.
Taylor also pointed to the bigger picture around the offense, saying Smith and Reich will have “endless options,” especially now that Jelani Woods made the 53-man roster. Woods, who previously played for Reich in Indianapolis, was one of the summer’s best stories after missing all of 2023 and 2024 with injuries and then maximizing his chances with Cade Klubnik and the Jets’ second-team offense.
Glenn said earlier this week that he expects Sadiq to play in Week 1, though it remains unclear whether he’ll be on a snap count after missing all of training camp and the preseason.
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