Well, we’re officially in the offseason. That means it’s time to bring a little optimism back into the conversation.
Free agency is exciting for obvious reasons. It’s an opportunity to improve the talent on the roster, add new and intriguing names, and inject some much-needed hope into the fan base. Yes, NFL free agency can absolutely hurt teams that hand out reckless contracts. But year after year, some of the league’s best organizations use it to their advantage. Teams like the Los Angeles Rams,
New England Patriots, and Seattle Seahawks have all leveraged free agency recently to add underrated talent at reasonable price tags.
The Jets have the opportunity to do the same.
Now, some of the players mentioned in this series may not ultimately reach the open market. But for the time being, let’s operate under the assumption that they will. With that in mind, let’s take a deeper look at some of the most intriguing free agency options for the Jets across a range of price points.
Alec Pierce
Let’s start with one of the bigger names: Alec Pierce.
Pierce fits the exact profile of the type of player the Jets should be targeting. He fills a need, he’s entering his prime (turning just 26 before the season begins), and he has a track record of success.
After being selected in the second round in 2022, Pierce’s first two seasons were solid but unspectacular. However, he took a legitimate step forward in Years 3 and 4. This past year in 2025, he had his best season to date: 47 receptions, 1,003 yards, and 6 touchdowns. The catch total may look modest, but the efficiency jumps off the page.
Make no mistake, the Jets need a wide receiver. Pierce wouldn’t just fill that need, he would complement Garrett Wilson’s skill set in a meaningful way. While Wilson operates primarily as a volume-driven target who can win at all levels of the field and separate, Pierce is a true vertical threat.
At 6’3” with 4.41 speed, he brings size and explosiveness down the field, along with outstanding ball skills. The advanced metrics back it up:
- Yards Per Route Run over the last two seasons: 1.82 and 2.10 (ranking 15th among 66 receivers with at least 60 targets)
- Average Depth of Target (aDOT): 20.2 — by far the highest in the league among receivers with comparable volume
- Over 85% of his receptions have gone for first downs
When Pierce catches the ball, good things happen.
In many ways, his skill set is what the Jets and Colts hoped Adonai Mitchell would develop into. Mitchell may be the smoother athlete and has flashed more separation skills, but he hasn’t shown the same downfield ball tracking or contested catch ability that Pierce has, which is part of the reason he couldn’t overtake Pierce in Indy.
Pierce would give the Jets something they haven’t had in quite some time: a legitimate, field-tilting vertical presence. And when the Jets inevitably add a young quarterback in the next couple of years, having a receiver who can consistently win downfield would be a massive asset.
Of course, it won’t come cheap.
OverTheCap currently values him at $18.62 million per year. With the rising salary cap and league-wide demand for wide receivers, I wouldn’t be surprised if that number climbed closer to $25 million annually. Something in the $20 to $25 million a year range likely makes the most sense for Pierce’s skillset.
Still, if the Jets are serious about making a splash, this is the type of investment that makes sense. A young receiver, a unique skill set, and a player who should theoretically still be ascending. Detractors will say that the Jets should not invest this much at one position (they’re already paying Garrett Wilson quite a lot), but if you’re going to spend your abundance of cap space, this is a pretty strong way to do it. Let’s move on to our second intriguing option who also is a big name:
Nakobe Dean
I expect Nakobe Dean to be somewhat polarizing, but he’s a player the Jets should absolutely be intrigued by for a variety of reasons.
Like Alec Pierce, Dean comes with a strong pedigree dating back to his prospect days and just as importantly, he’s young. Dean turned 25 this past year, and there’s every reason to believe his best football is still ahead of him.
Full disclosure: his 2025 season isn’t going to wow anyone at first glance.
After suffering a major knee injury in January 2025, Dean missed the first six weeks of the season. When he returned, his play was uneven. According to PFF, he graded 39th out of 78 off-ball linebackers with at least 400 snaps. That said, he graded No. 1 as a pass rusher at the position, which is notable.
Early in the year, Dean looked a step off. The explosiveness wasn’t fully back, and there were stretches where he was clearly working his way into form. But what’s encouraging and what I could argue matters most is how he finished. From Week 14 onward, Dean was the second-highest graded linebacker in football over a 150-snap sample. That late-season surge suggests the knee was finally behind him.
It’s also important to remember what he looked like before the injury.
In 2024, Dean played a major role on the Philadelphia Eagles’ Super Bowl winning defense, which finished the year ranked No. 1 in the league. He led the NFL in run stops and graded as one of the higher-ranked defenders in football overall. That version of Dean was impactful and disruptive.
To me, he’s a classic “buy-low” candidate.
There’s a very real chance you’re getting an ascending player at a slight discount because of an uneven season coming off injury. He’s a legitimate pass-rushing threat from the linebacker position (26 pressures over the last two years), has proven he can be a high-level run defender, and possesses the athletic profile to avoid being a liability in coverage.
A recent report from Fox Sports suggested Dean could sign for as low as $8 million per year, which would put him around 23rd among off-ball linebackers entering free agency. I’d expect his deal to land somewhere in the $8–12 million range.
For a Jets team that’s starved for defensive difference-makers, that’s the kind of calculated gamble worth taking. Now let’s take a look at the final player:
Bryan Cook
This is a position where it makes a ton of sense for the Jets to be aggressive in free agency.
Safety was a major issue defensively last year. While I thought Malachi Moore showed enough as a rookie to earn another year as a starter, the Jets have to upgrade the spot next to him. There are a few intriguing options on the market, but I’ll start with perhaps the most attractive: Bryan Cook of the Kansas City Chiefs.
Cook (noticing a theme yet?) is 26 years old and entering the prime of his career. A former second-round pick out of Cincinnati in 2022, he was solid but unspectacular in 2023 and 2024. Then, in a contract year in 2025, he broke out in a big way.
Cook finished as the fourth-highest graded safety in football this past season. He was excellent across the board: ranking top five as both a tackler and in pass coverage.
His versatility is what makes him especially appealing for Aaron Glenn’s defense. Cook lined up in the box, played nickel at times, and handled deep center-field responsibilities. That kind of flexibility adds to his value.
He’s also a strong and reliable tackler. Over the past two seasons, Cook has recorded 64 tackles in each year with just 10 missed tackles total—a missed tackle rate of roughly 6%, which is elite since 2024. On top of that, he truly blossomed in coverage this past season. He ranked top 10 in both forced incompletions and pass breakups, consistently getting his hands on the football.
When you combine high-level run defense, positional flexibility, all with strong coverage production to boot, it’s no surprise his overall grade reflected it.
Projected Contract
Cook’s next deal will likely land him inside the top 15 highest-paid safeties in the league. PFF projects him at around $12 million per year, while Spotrac’s valuation sits closer to $14.2 million annually.
A contract in the $12–14 million range would place him roughly around 15th at the position in terms of average annual value. Considering his age, versatility, and trajectory, that feels like a fair number.
To me, safety is a must-add this offseason. And at least right now, Cook might be my favorite option on the board.
Summary
These are three of the bigger names the Jets could realistically target in free agency.
While it’s always smart to exploit the second wave of free agency, all three of these players stand out for a simple reason: they’re young, entering (or already in) their primes, and trending upward.
If the Jets are going to spend, it should be on ascending talent. Not aging names living off past production which we have seen previous Jets regimes do quite a bit. Each of these players fits that mold and could realistically blossom into core pieces for this team over the next several years.
Free agency isn’t just about adding talent. It’s about adding the right talent at the right time. These three check a lot of those boxes.
