Nobody on the Jets roster is actually going anywhere, but ESPN’s Bill Barnwell put a price tag on the whole thing anyway, and the exercise is a decent gut-check on where the roster’s real talent sits.
Barnwell ran his annual trade-tiers piece, sorting players across the league by what they’d fetch in a hypothetical deal. None of the Jets named here are on the block — this is a valuation drill, not a rumor. With that out of the way, here’s how the Jets shook out.
Worth a First-Round Pick and Then Some
Two Jets landed in Barnwell’s tier for players who’d command more than a single first-rounder: edge David Bailey and receiver Garrett Wilson.
“Both players came close to the two first-round pick category for me, but Bailey’s concerns holding up against the run might give teams that want to play with light boxes and ask more out of their edge defenders on early downs some pause,” Barnwell wrote. He added that Wilson is “coming off an injury-impacted 2025” and hasn’t yet had the kind of season that vaults a receiver into the elite tier, though he chalked that up to bad quarterback play.
Bailey belonging here tracks. He was the No. 2 overall pick in April’s draft, and you could argue his value should sit even higher than a first-and-change. The run-defense questions are fair, but he’s built to get after the passer, and pass rushers get paid at a premium over run-stuffers every single time. That’s the whole point of the position.
Wilson is worth more than this tier too — he just needs the monster season to prove it. Neither of these guys is realistically available; they’re foundation pieces on opposite sides of the ball.
The First-Round-Pick Tier
Three more Jets slotted into the group Barnwell pegged at roughly a single first-round pick: tackles Olu Fashanu and Armand Membou, plus tight end Kenyon Sadiq.
“Both Jets tackles might also be close to landing something more than a first-rounder,” Barnwell wrote. He noted Membou might be the better player, but that Fashanu improved after an uneven rookie year and was steadier in Year 2 — and since Fashanu plays left tackle, that bumps his trade appeal. He added that a more stable quarterback situation would make both tackles look better, and that both would be easy first-round picks again in a redraft.
If anything, this feels light. Young, good offensive tackles on rookie deals are among the hardest assets to acquire in the league, and having two of them is a genuine luxury. Membou looks like a star, Fashanu’s trending up, and Sadiq’s valuation is the simplest of the bunch since he was a first-round pick in April.
The Honorable Mentions
Two Jets just missed the cut: running back Breece Hall and receiver Omar Cooper Jr.
On Hall, Barnwell pointed to reporting from last season that the Jets would have moved him for a third-round pick, with the best actual offer reportedly coming in as a fourth-rounder from the Chiefs. On Cooper, he wrote that the late first-round pick “plays a premium position” but that the Indiana product still has to prove himself as a pro before other teams buy the grade.
Not much to dispute there. Hall’s a running back, and the reported asking price for him told the story — the Jets would have taken less than a first to move on. Cooper cost a move back into the first round to land, and notably didn’t cost a future first to pull off.
Exercises like this rarely do the Jets many favors. The team has lost for so long that outsiders tend to look at the roster’s talent through a skeptical lens. But five players in Barnwell’s top tiers plus two honorable mentions is a real haul of assets — the kind of foundation that suggests the roster is in better shape than the franchise’s reputation lets on.
