Ah, remember last summer? Aaron Rodgers was going to lead the Jets deep into the playoffs, Will McDonald was going to match Bryce Huff sack for sack, Garrett Wilson was going to have 1,500 yards receiving and we were going to watch all the build up to it on HBO’s Hard Knocks.

We even were going to have a few nice surprises from the show including Jets’ rookie running back out of Pitt, Izzy Abanikanda. The show focused on the Izzy’s unlikely path to the NFL and his explosiveness with the ball in hands. Fans thought they were getting lightning in a bottle to go along with the steadiness of Breece Hall and Dalvin Cook.

But the NFL is a fickle business when it comes to the players it can turn on a dime. Now, we could see Izzy go from potential star, to cut from the team.

The Jets know they have a full time “bell cow” running back in Breece Hall. Robert Saleh said so earlier in the offseason. They even went on to bring in a backup running back slash return specialist last week in Tarik Cohen. But there will be no Dalvin Cook-like signing this offseason as the Jets drafted not one, but two running backs to go along with the stable they already had.

Reports out of Jets’ OTAs are that fourth-round rookie out of Wisconsin, Braelon Allen looks natural as a receiver. Like we were told with Abanikanda, Allen has tremendous explosiveness with the ball in his hands. Going through the rest of the offseason program, it is likely his RB2 job to lose.

South Dakota State running back Isaiah Davis, who was selected by the Jets towards the end of the fifth round, has also been turning some heads. Reports from the draft were that the offensive coaching staff was pounding the table for the team to take Davis, despite having drafted Allen a round earlier and Abanikanda the year before. Davis should be a fun depth piece at the position at the very least.

As for Tarik Cohen, he looks shifty and explosive right away in his first few days with the team as he continues to battle back from injuries. Most significantly, he’s already running with the first team.

So, where does that leave the darling of the 2023 season of Hard Knocks, Izzy Abanikanda? Not in a great spot. Izzy is plummeting down the depth chart. In OTAs he got zero reps with the first team or with the second team. When he is getting on the field, he is struggling. That is a recepie to wind up traded or cut before the end of training camp. There are only so many reps to go around and Izzy isn’t making enough of an impact to earn more reps.

Despite being one of the featured players on Hard Knocks and playing well in the preseason, Izzy had nagging injuries and the Jets offense didn’t stay on the field long enough to get him many reps during the season. When he finally did get on the field after the Jets traded Cook and made a shift to playing the young guys, he failed to impress.

Izzy is the kind of back that could go 90 yards on a single play. The problem is, he never did. So, he just wound up with just 22 carries for 70 yards. A measly 3.2 yards per carry. Nothing that would ensure a spot on the team and now it appears, it might be headed that way.

For the Jets, Izzy becomes another chapter in a long and depressing book of failed draft picks after round two. Joe Douglas has drafted a running back every year he has been GM of the Jets and apart from Breece, who was selected in the second round, none of them have had any impact on the team. 

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