Three on O: Vera-Tucker, Wilson, Yeboah

After each game, we'll be highlighting three defensive and three offensive players and looking in detail at their performance. We'll wrap up today with the offense:

Ice Road Tuckers

One of the main priorities for Alijah Vera-Tucker in the 2024 season was to stay healthy. This was important both for the team and him personally with a potential contract extension on the horizon.

Starting 15 of 17 games and playing through a high ankle sprain that limited his practice time for the last two months of the season - and at a high level - reduces the perceived risk in signing him to such a contract, but also gives us a good idea of how he is capable of performing in optimum circumstances, as part of a line that has developed some chemistry.

The three inside guys all started at least 15 games and played over 900 snaps, so the chemistry there was excellent. Although Morgan Moses missed one game and played less than half the snaps in three more games down the stretch, this didn't affect Vera-Tucker, who if anything played even better post-injury.

In the last six games, Vera-Tucker gave up no sacks or hits in pass protection and just five pressures overall as actually ended up as the highest-graded Jets offensive lineman according to Pro Football Focus.

His impact in the running game got better and better over the course of the season as the interior trio developed their chemistry and you can see from all of the most successful running plays on Sunday that when Vera-Tucker works in sync with his linemates, that's what gets the run game going.

Let's review some of the highlights:

Breece Hall shows good patience here, waiting for the block to develop as Vera-Tucker drives Calais Campbell back off the line, setting up Zack Bailey to easily be able to seal him off. Vera-Tucker then peels off to pick up the linebacker and seal him off too so he can't get across and fill the lane created.

Vera-Tucker picks up the linebacker at the second level here and drives him back on the move to create a crease for Isaiah Davis, who - to his credit - breaks a tackle to turn a 10-yard play into 20. But the key to the success of the play is the timing of Vera-Tucker's bump on Zach Sieler which sets up Joe Tippmann to be able to get outside leverage on the reach block.

Finally, the alignment here sets up a big gap in the defensive front if the run goes to the right. Vera-Tucker is doubling Benito Jones but doesn't just neutralize him, he drives him back and widens that lane. This puts Chop Robinson under pressure to crash down and makes it easy for Carter Warren to use his momentum against him and wash him down too so Hall can hit the edge at speed and run through an arm tackle for a nice gain.

The Jets have the comfort of being able to keep Vera-Tucker in 2025 under the fifth year option if they decide not to extend him or can't agree to terms at this stage. If they do that, he'll look to build on the best season of his career so far.

Lucky Kenny

Kenny Yeboah was one of the few players who hasn't played much this season to get an extra opportunity in the season finale. He played 25 snaps, which was the most he played all year other than the one game that Tyler Conklin missed because his wife went into labor.

It was also the first time all year that Yeboah caught more than one pass, as he ended up with five catches for 47 yards on the season, having previously managed to rack up just four catches for 64 yards in his career.

Yeboah had two catches for 20 yards and set up a touchdown with this tough first down catch over the middle. The ball was thrown behind him but he still did well to reach back and make a falling grab.

This wasn't really a case of Rodgers throwing inaccurately behind Yeboah because leading him with the pass would have set him up to be lit up by a defender so Rodgers put that pass where it needed to be and Yeboah probably should have read the coverage better and sat down there, which might have enabled him to turn it upfield. Still, he did well to keep it off the turf and Allen Lazard scored anyway on the next snap.

Yeboah doesn't really offer much as a receiver, although with nine catches, 111 yards and a touchdown in limited action over the years, does he offer any less than Jeremy Ruckert did this year? Ruckert had 105 yards on 18 catches in 393 snaps while Yeboah has played just 313 career snaps.

If Yeboah could have proven to be a reliable blocker, then he might have started to take time away from Ruckert who has been inconsistent all year. However, Yeboah has been unable to do this, as he's been inconsistent too, including on Sunday.

One thing he does do better than Ruckert, however, is his special teams contributions where he makes more of a consistent impact covering kicks and blocking. He has 11 special teams tackles in his career, while Ruckert has just four.

At the start of the season, Ruckert making some strides to set up a situation where he starts and a guy like Yeboah could be the number two in 2025 seemed viable. However, it doesn't seem like either is a starting option and they may end up competing for a backup role if Yeboah comes back next year.

Wilson he or won't he?

It's a foregone conclusion that the possibility of Garrett Wilson requesting a trade could dominate the headlines this offseason, even if there's nothing of substance to support that possibility.

Games like this one, where Wilson's third target of the game didn't come until the fourth quarter, are the kind of games that Wilson is assumed to have an issue with.

Nevertheless, the offense functioned well and he did still contribute (four catches for 51 yards on five targets and one catch for no gain on a lateral pass). It may be frustrating for him to see five targets when Davante Adams sees 12, but other than a couple of downfield catches, Adams got a mixture of low percentage throws when nothing else was available and easy pitch and catch stuff that was likely available because Wilson was drawing more attention his way.

If Rodgers and Adams return and Wilson is receiving less targets as more of a secondary option, you could imagine that being frustrating for him, but he's played consistently hard for three years and overcame any temporary frustrations to produce very consistently. And if there are low-target games but also a bunch of high-target games, then that adds up to a lot of targets over the course of the season.

On Sunday, two of his catches came on out patterns, one where he first jab-stepped inside to draw his man off balance and another where he just broke outside and caught a well-timed pass. He also had an 11-yard gain on a quick dump-off to the flat; the kind of pass Adams gets a few of every game when his defender is playing off.

This was Wilson's most spectacular play though:

There's no denying Wilson's talent and his importance to the Jets' future given his age compared to players like Adams and Rodgers. They might not be around next year anyway, but Wilson has shown he has the talent to produce no matter who the coach and who the quarterback is, so we can confidently expect another big season from him in 2025...assuming he is back, of course.

Previously: Three on D: McDonald, Davis, Quinnen Williams