Jets' Breece Hall has big plans for 2024
New York Jets running back Breece Hall runs past Cleveland Browns linebacker Sione Takitaki during the second half of an NFL football game Thursday, Dec. 28, 2023, in Cleveland. (AP Photo/Sue Ogrocki) Credit: AP/Sue Ogrocki
FLORHAM PARK, N.J.
Representatives from the NFL Network were in the Jets’ locker room on Thursday, handing out ballots and soliciting votes for their annual list of the top 100 players. The information they gathered this week here and elsewhere around the league will be compiled, computed and then broadcast this summer.
Breece Hall thinks he’ll make his debut on the list that comes from this season.
“I do think I’m in the top 100, but I don’t care where I land,” he told Newsday as teammates scribbled names of other players all around him. “On any given Sunday, I think I can be the best player on the field. That’s that.”
That’s just the latest proclamation from the second-year running back, who, in the second half of the season, became the focal point of the Jets’ offense.
Earlier this week, he posted his expectations for 2024 on social media. They included being a top running back, a Pro Bowler and an All-Pro.
The week before that, he warned those mocking the Jets this season to “get your laughs in now” because “it ain’t gonna be like this forever.”
There is something new emanating from number 20 as this season draws to an end. A fire. A defiance. A desire to prove himself that is oozing out of him.
“Knowing what this team has, the pieces we have, the stuff we’re going to add, we have a lot of players who are great and who are striving for that,” he said on Thursday. “That’s the reason why in the future we’re going to be really good . . . I’m excited to see what we do in the future for sure.”
It took a little while for the Jets to figure out what to do with Hall’s present.
He started the season with a bang, taking the opening handoff — which turned out to be the only time Aaron Rodgers got the ball in the hands of a teammate this season before tearing an Achilles — 26 yards for an electrifying run.
Once the quarterback dynamic changed, though, along with some other injuries on the offensive line, the entire offense had to adjust. That meant Hall, too.
“When you have the best quarterback to ever play the game get hurt, the offense changes a little bit,” Hall said.
Making things more difficult was a lack of familiarity to his new offensive coordinator. Hall had spent the spring and summer rehabbing an ACL tear, so Nathaniel Hackett didn’t have a true sense of what he could do.
Eventually, Hackett figured it out.
“I don’t think I was ready for him to be as productive as he was in the pass game,” Hackett said. “I think that’s something that has added a whole dimension to things that we can do, lining up at wide receiver, catching the ball from the backfield and, when he touches the ball, he could score at any time.”
Hackett said he first started to realize Hall could be that kind of an option in the Giants game when he sprung a checkdown for 50 yards.
Despite the agonizingly tardy revelation of that part of his game, Hall leads NFL running backs in receiving yards this season (579, ahead of Christian McCaffrey’s 564) and is second in receptions with 74 (Alvin Kamara has 75; McCaffrey has 67).
“It really stood out that it wasn’t just checkdowns that you wanted to get to, but you wanted to really try to gameplan and get him the ball from the backfield,” Hackett said. “I think he’s gotten better as the year has gone on, too. I think that’s been great to see, but it would be great to have an offseason and be able to work with him even more and get him involved earlier.”
Now everyone knows. And now Hall is heading into his first true offseason as a pro.
He spent the months before his rookie season going through all the NFL Combine and Pro Day shenanigans, then spent last year recovering from the knee injury.
These next few months will be the first time in his career that Hall gets to focus solely on improvement.
“I get to work out to get better instead of working out to be normal,” he said. “I’m excited to see the results and the product of the work I put in this offseason.”
Hall already has laid out what he wants to happen. What he hopes will happen.
Next season, with his health fully returned, with a staff that knows his skills and how to deploy them, and with a Hall of Fame quarterback, he should get a chance to actually make them happen.
If that all comes together, Hall might just become a mainstay near the top of that list of 100 for a long time to come.
Tom Rock began covering sports for Newsday in 1996 and became its NFL columnist in 2022. He previously was Newsday's Giants beat writer beginning in 2008.
