Taylor Is Out, Onyemata Is Under the Knife, and the Jets Are Scrambling on Both Sides

Mason Taylor is listed out, and David Onyemata is already headed for core-muscle surgery. Two games into the reset, the Jets have lost a starter on each side of the ball in the same week.

Taylor had been one of the more reliable pieces of the 2025 offense — 44 catches and 369 yards across 13 games last season, the kind of steady tight end presence that a new quarterback leans on while he finds his footing. With him out, Jelani Woods moves to the top of the depth chart at the position, and Kenyon Sadiq — who missed time this preseason with a hernia — is next in line behind him. That's a thin room for a quarterback still getting comfortable in a new system. On the defensive side, I wrote yesterday about Onyemata's surgery and what it means for a front four that was already short on proven depth. T'Vondre Sweat steps into a larger role, but the interior is now operating without its anchor.

What makes this week uncomfortable isn't either injury in isolation — it's the combination. The Jets can absorb one. Absorbing both at once, two games in, with a roster that spent all of August cycling through the training room, is a different problem. Jelani Woods and whoever fills Onyemata's snaps will need to hold things together while the coaching staff figures out what it actually has.

Aaron Glenn doesn't have much margin here. The reset was sold as a clean break from 2025's dysfunction. Right now it mostly looks like the same injury avalanche with different names on the list.