Jets Lose Another Offensive Lineman For Season, This Time to Non-Football Injury

Rookie tackle Max Mitchell was placed on the Non-Football Injury list, ending his season.

While the 2022 season has been a dream come true for the Jets, a campaign featuring meaningful games with postseason implications in the month of December, it's been a nightmare of a year for the offensive line.

Mekhi Becton and Alijah Vera-Tucker are out for the year with season-ending injuries while George Fant and Duane Brown previously missed time on injured reserve.

Now, the Jets can add another name to that list, except this time, the reasoning is unclear.

Jets head coach Robert Saleh revealed on Wednesday that rookie tackle Max Mitchell is out for the rest of the year on the Non-Football Injury list. Saleh declined to elaborate when asked about what happened to the fourth-round pick.

"I'm not going to get into specifics right now because there's a lot of things that we're trying to sort out. And for him, too," Saleh told reporters.

Mitchell stepped up earlier this season in the face of adversity, starting each of the Jets' first four games of the year. A promising start was wiped away when the rookie suffered a knee injury in Week 4 against the Steelers—he didn't play again until Week 12, making a start last week against the Vikings.

With lineman Cedric Ogbuehi already on IR with a groin injury, New York will use Mike Remmers going forward as a backup swing tackle behind Fant and Brown, per Saleh. The Jets went on to sign Laurent Duvernay-Tardif from the practice squad, a veteran that appeared in eight games with the Jets last year. 

To make matters worse midway through this week, with another challenging matchup against the Bills looming, New York has a flu bug going around the organization. Saleh revealed that Fant, wideout Corey Davis, cornerback D.J. Reed and defensive lineman Micheal Clemons won't practice on Wednesday. 

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