The New York Jets placed Quincy Williams on injured reserve ahead of Week 4. That rules him out for a minimum of four games.
Missing an All-Pro linebacker is bad news, but Zack Rosenblatt of The Athletic revealed a silver lining injury update.
“Williams isn’t expected to miss more than the required four games on injured reserve,” Rosenblatt wrote. That means Williams will be eligible to return for the Jets’ Week 8 road trip against the Cincinnati Bengals on Sunday, October 26.
That is a week and a half before the NFL’s 2025 trade deadline on Tuesday, November 4.
Trade Rumors Are Hot and Heavy
“If Quincy comes off IR and a team looks at Quincy and goes, ‘damn, this is an All-Pro linebacker,’ I mean, you take anything you can get if you aren’t paying him,” NBC analyst Connor Rogers said on “Badlands.”
“They aren’t going to pay him next year, so you’d have to [trade] him at that point,” Jets analyst Joe Caporoso responded.
Williams, 29, is in the last year of his $18 million contract. He is scheduled to be an unrestricted free agent in 2026.
Unfulfilled Promise to Williams
ESPN’s Rich Cimini revealed on the “Flight Deck” podcast over the offseason that the previous regime “more or less told Williams that don’t worry, we will give you a new contract before the 2025 season starts, an extension basically.”
However, they were both fired before they ever got the chance to fulfill their promise.
Jets Did Williams a Solid Over the Offseason
While Williams didn’t get the extension he was promised, the new regime went out of their way to hook him up.
NFL analyst Will Parkinson revealed that the Jets “added incentives” to Williams’ contract this offseason. Cimini specifically said Williams received $1.5 million in bonus money as “a little sweetener for a player who has outperformed his contract.”
It Seems Unlikely the Jets Will Cough up the Necessary Beans
Williams will be 30 by the start of the 2026 season. The Jets already invested $45 million in Jamien Sherwood this offseason at the same position. Sherwood’s $15 million annual salary is among the top five highest paid at the linebacker position, per Over The Cap.
Williams, who possesses a much stronger overall resume as a former All-Pro, could make a strong case that he deserves even more money than Sherwood received.
Would the Jets double down at the off-ball linebacker position with record-setting money being put aside for two guys at the same position? Shoulder shrug. This is a new regime, so we don’t have a long track record to study and analyze its decision-making process.
However, it seems very unlikely. So, if the Jets aren’t going to pay him and they currently sit well outside the playoff picture at 0-3, why not trade him for something, rather than potentially losing him for nothing?
It truly depends on whether the Jets are in it come the trade deadline. If they are, it might be worth it to hold onto all your pieces and go chase the playoff dream. However, if they are completely out of it, it would behoove the Jets to sell off whatever assets they can for future draft capital to accelerate the rebuild.
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