The 10 most underrated New York Jets players of the 2010s decade

Although the New York Jets were mostly known for their futility in the 2010s decades after making the AFC Championship game in back-to-back seasons in 2009 and 2010 – and have never made the postseason since –  there were a number of players who distinguished themselves as being among the best in the NFL in their respective positions.

Now, very few of these players were household names or were playing marquee positions, especially early in the decade when the vast majority of the attention went to skill position players on juggernaut offenses.

But there were some truly elite, hard-working football players on even the worst of the Jets teams in the 2010s. To honor them, here is a list of the 10 most underrated Jets players of the 2010s that the mainstream forgot to teach you about – or simply didn’t tell you enough about how good they were.

MLB David Harris

Most NFL fans today either don’t remember David Harris or never heard of him to begin with, but he was one of the most well-rounded linebackers in the league in his day and a sure-handed tackler who perfected the art form of being a leader who never made mistakes.

An unsung hero on one of the better defenses of the decade at the beginning of it, Harris had the speed and athleticism to cover linebackers while thumping in the run game or running from sideline to sideline to make plays.

Harris was one of the league’s foremost tackling machines and a true quarterback on defense, registering 120 tackles in five different seasons. He also had four seasons with five sacks and memorably intercepted four passes in the 2011 NFL season.

Although Harris never made it to any Pro Bowl teams in the 2010s, he was an All-Pro in 2009 and a consistent starter for the Jets. Harris was a consummate pro, and it’s a shame that very few people outside the Jets fanbase remember how good he was.

LT D’Brickashaw Ferguson

The New York Jets offensive line wasn’t known for being a standout group during the decade, as they had some specific major weak points, including at the right tackle position with guys like Wayne Hunter and Austin Howard.

But over on the left side, D’Brickashaw Ferguson, in addition to having one of the all-time great NFL player names, was a force of nature and one of the best all-around offensive tackles in the league for years.

Ferguson bookended the Jets line and led by example, starting for the Green and White from 2010 to 2015 with two Pro Bowl honors to start the decade, as his three-year peak came around the time when the Jets were legitimately competing for Super Bowl appearances in the tough AFC East.

Although Ferguson, in addition to the Pro Bowls, did get recognition by being named a top 100 player in the NFL by other players in the 2011 season, that didn’t necessarily mean the wider NFL world and its fans had the appropriate appreciation for him over the years.

Ferguson was an ironman at a position in which wear and tear is common, only missing one snap in his 10-year career while starting 160 consecutive regular season games during that time span.

The fact that Ferguson was a top-level left tackle while never missing a play is grounds alone for deserving more recognition, and, to this day, Ferguson is a great example to his community, following in the footsteps of his mother and grandmother to become a nurse.

DE Muhammad Wilkerson

The fact that Muhammad Wilkerson only made it to one Pro Bowl during his time with the New York Jets from 2011 to 2017 is an absurdity and one of the overlooked travesties of the decade in football, and it’s always a telling sign when a player is named to more All-Pro teams than they have Pro Bowl selections.

Wilkerson was as good as any 3-4 defensive end in the NFL not named JJ Watt, who, at the time, was nothing like anything we’ve seen in the league to that point. But Wilkerson was also an elite freak of an athlete, perhaps overlooked because of Watt’s greatness on a better Houston Texans team and because he was more of a force against the run than the pass.

Even so, Wilkerson did rack up four straight seasons with at least five sacks at the peak of his powers, including two double-digit sack seasons as one of the most disruptive interior defensive linemen in the league.

You can’t tell the story of the 2010s Jets without talking about Wilkerson, who was one of the league’s most disruptive forces. If anything, his peak rating of 39th in the NFL Top 100 shows that even his peers didn’t quite give him enough credit, though, at least, they very much knew who he was which is certainly more than can be said of the masses at the time.

OLB Jordan Jenkins

Former Georgia Bulldogs third-round pick Jordan Jenkins was just a solid football player for the Jets, suiting up for Gang Green from the 2016 season to the end of the decade in 2020 when he moved on to join the Houston Texans and Las Vegas Raiders before falling out of the league.

Jenkins had never been voted to a Pro Bowl nor merited serious consideration, but he was a quality outside linebacker and edge rusher for the Jets who had 15 sacks and 28 QB hits at his best in back-to-back seasons in 2018 and 2019.

So it was only a brief period of time in which Jenkins was a viable NFL pass rusher, but he was a force off the edge for the Jets in those years, capable of game-changing performances like the one he had in 2017 against the Buffalo Bills on Thursday Night Football. If the Jets hadn’t been so futile at the end of the 2010s, perhaps Jenkins would have ended up with a much better career off the edge, as you could see the frustration boiling over by the time the 2010s ended.

NT Steve McLendon

Those run-stuffing defensive linemen tended to be the most underappreciated players in the NFL, particularly during the 2010s as the league began moving more towards being a passing league.

The space-eating nose tackles, in particular, didn’t get much love, and unlike Damon “Snacks” Harrison, who was also highly underrated, Steve McLendon didn’t get the benefit of a catchy nickname.

Whereas players like Muhammed Wilkerson and Sheldon Richardson were able to accrue enough pass-rushing statistics in their roles to get some Pro Bowl love, McLendon never made it to the Pro Bowl in his career.

McLendon was a quality nose tackle for the Pittsburgh Steelers as the successor to the legendary Casey Hampton before moving on to the Jets in 2016 and posting even better run-stopping numbers at the peak of his career.

He was one of the best nose tackles of the decade and produced his best work in a Jets uniform. McLendon wasn’t an elite player, but he actually wasn’t that far off and was ultimately hurt, like so many others, by the overall futility of the Jets as a team.

NT Damon Harrison

Now we move to Damon Harrison, who was one of the best defensive linemen in the entire league during the 2010s, starting for the Jets from 2012 to 2015 before McLendon replaced him at the nose after he defected to the rival New York Giants (who would then become nearly as futile as the Jets to create a sense of cruel justice in Snacks abandoning Gang Green).

During his time with the Jets, Harrison was, statistically speaking, the best run defender in the league and a great equalizer in that department, opening up so much room for teammates Muhammed Wilkerson and Sheldon Richardson to explode as tacklers and pass rushers.

Harrison got plenty of tackles, too, though. His statistics read like a respectable run-stuffing output for a linebacker, let alone a defensive tackle. In three seasons as a primary starter for the Jets before moving to the Giants, Harrison had 66, 55, and 72 tackles.

Those are outrageous numbers, and if he played for more successful teams and in a decade where running the football were more of a priority, Snacks would honestly be getting Hall of Fame love. There are few in history who were as dominant in his role as Harrison was, and it’s crazy that he never made a single Pro Bowl in his career.

WR Jeremy Kerley

Naturally, with how terrible the Jets quarterbacking was, with the exception of Ryan Fitzpatrick’s miracle year in the Chan Gailey offense, and how many losing seasons they had, there aren’t going to be many skill position players who stood out positively during the decade – and didn’t at least get some credit for being great, like Brandon Marshall and Eric Decker.

But before Marshall and Decker injected real quality into the Jets offense for a brief period of time, Jeremy Kerley was the one truly decent wide receiver holding it on together amidst a turnstile of quarterback play that wasn’t anywhere close to NFL quality.

Kerley almost never dropped a pass and was versatile enough to dominate the slot or make plays downfield, even throwing and returning punts for touchdowns during his time with Gang Green.

The fifth-round draft hit’s best season came as a sophomore in the NFL in 2012 when he turned just 56 receptions into 827 yards. Kerley would only total over 500 receiving yards once after that, but he was a solid receiver on an offense that was one of the worst in the league during that time period.

RB Chris Ivory

Chan Gailey, Ryan Fitzpatrick, and his star wide receiver trio made the most headlines in the 2015 NFL season, but the best skill position player for the Jets in the 2010s may have actually been a running back, Chris Ivory.

Most backs didn’t last more than one or two seasons for the Jets during that decade, as the team was trotting out some real plodders like Shonn Greene and Bilal Powell who never should have been primary ball-carriers in the NFL.

Ivory, though, was a real gem, exploding through defenses with some of the most violent running in the league, making guys miss with agility that was overlooked by his large frame, and picking up yards where yards would have otherwise been difficult to find.

The Jets smartly plucked him from the New Orleans Saints and made him their primary rusher. From 2013 to 2015, Ivory had more than 800 rushing yards in each season for the Jets, never averaging fewer than 4.1 yards per carry in his campaign.

In his final season with Gang Green in 2015, Ivory posted his only career 1,000-yard rushing season while notching a career-high seven touchdowns en route to his only career Pro Bowl in 2015.

Ivory didn’t do much in the passing game, hence where the likes of Powell came in, but he was one of the league’s best pure rushers during that time and would have received more plaudits if the Jets were 1) better and 2) managed to keep him instead of letting him fizzle out in Jacksonville.

LG Matt Slauson

Because the New York Jets were so bad, players like Matt Slauson never got their due for being solid football players, whereas they would have been cult heroes of the decade if they played for a team like the New England Patriots or Seattle Seahawks.

Slauson almost never gave up a sack during his time with the Jets, and while he was no Brandon Moore, he was certainly ten times better than Brian Winters or the other guards who started games for the Jets during the 2010s.

A mere sixth-round pick out of Nebraska in the 2009 NFL Draft, Slauson more than outplayed his draft status as a three-year starter for the Jets before joining the Chicago Bears in 2013, where he actually started to get recognition for being one of the best overall guards in the NFL.

SCB Kyle Wilson

From Jim Leonhard at the safety position to Kyle Wilson at corner, the New York Jets had a number of underrated defensive backs in the late 2000s and early 2010s when their defense was a revving engine, though Leonhard, a successful coach now, was better and more recognized.

Wilson, on the other hand, is a player most people outside of the very diehard-est of Jets fans have never heard of. Although he was an above-average starting boundary cornerback, Wilson did his best work in the slot, which is a shame since slot corners were a new concept to the average NFL fan in the early 2010s before players like Chris Harris Jr. and Kyle Arrington made the slot position commonplace water cooler talk.

From 2010 to 2014, Wilson was a starting cornerback for the Jets before joining the New Orleans Saints and leaving the league. He barely had any statistics at the cornerback position, never amassing more than six passes defended in a single season, but that honestly backed up his underrated ability to shut receivers down, especially those smaller wideouts who tried to win with short-area quickness and possession.

Wilson was ahead of his time and therefore underrated because of it, but he was a great nickel cornerback on a dominant trio with Pro Bowlers Darrelle Revis and Antonio Cromartie, legitimately outplaying the latter at that time.