After two weeks of missing two starting cornerbacks, the Jets will get Michael Carter II and D.J. Reed back for Sunday’s game in New England.
Sauce Gardner has been without one or both of his fellow cornerbacks for three matchups, and is looking forward to the on-field reunion.
Carter, who has been dealing with a back injury, missed two straight games while Reed missed Sunday’s Steelers game due to a groin injury.
“It’s always great to have those two guys, you know, have our group together,” Gardner said after practice Friday. “Great teams have tried to attack us without them. Now they’re back, so I’m looking forward to that. No knock to the guys that are out there because we have full belief that they can get the job done as well.”
In place of Carter and Reed has been a mix of Brandin Echols, Qwan’tez Stiggers, Isaiah Oliver, and Kendall Sheffield.
It’s ideal timing to have the starting trio back together to strengthen the defense along with the Jets debut of Haason Reddick.
“It’s big,” interim head coach Jeff Ulbrich said. “I have tremendous respect for the guys that we have that back up in the secondary because I really believe that we have some depth in the league. But those guys, D.J., MC, and Sauce, when they’re together out there, they’ve got the advantage of not only ultra-talented as we know, but time on task together and they have cohesion together.
“They just understand each other’s voices. There are times that they communicate without communicating. There’s nothing that can substitute that.”
Ulbrich mentioned that it has been one of the “better” preparation weeks he has seen in the three-plus seasons he has been with the Jets.
He credited Davante Adams’ locker room speech following the Jets’ 37-15 loss to the Steelers as a turning point.
“Him shining a light on the fact that the energy has to be right, and I think we’ve identified why it wasn’t right, and we fixed it,” Ulbrich said. “I felt like this week was just the team that we need to be going forward. I’m just so excited about reinventing ourselves in a way.”
RG Alijah Vera-Tucker (ankle), S Ashtyn Davis (concussion) and DT Leki Fotu (knee) are out Sunday.
RT Morgan Moses (knee) and TE Kenny Yeboah (abdomen) are both listed as questionable, while S Tony Adams (hamstring) and WR Allen Lazard (chest) will both be game-time decisions.
