New York Jets bolster OL depth in trade with the Baltimore Ravens

The New York Jets have acquired a former starter on the offensive line from the Baltimore Ravens. Here are all the details.

Apparently, New York Jets general manager Joe Douglas wasn’t joking when he said he wanted to improve the offensive line.

On Monday afternoon Manish Mehta of the New York Daily News reported that the Jets had acquired Baltimore Ravens offensive lineman Alex Lewis.

Lewis was initially scheduled to be released by the team, but the Jets swooped in and were proactive in getting their man.

Gang green had to surrender a conditional 2020 seventh-round draft choice in exchange for Alex’s services.

In the span of a week, the Jets have acquired two offensive linemen in unique ways:

• The Jets convinced former Carolina Panthers All-Pro center Ryan Kalil to come out of retirement.
• Plus the squad acquired a former starter in Alex Lewis on the trade block.

When your NFL team doesn’t draft an offensive lineman in the first round during a 13 year period, they have to get creative to acquire offensive line talent.

Joe Douglas played on the offensive line for the Richmond Spiders back in the day and realizes how important the trenches are to winning.

If the Jets want to get where they want to go, they’ll need to protect their franchise quarterback Sam Darnold.

Last season Alex Lewis started 10 games for the Baltimore Ravens. This offseason Alex was recovering from some offseason shoulder surgery and started training camp on the physically unable to perform list.

Kevin Patra of NFL.com indicated that he did pass his team physical.

During his four-year NFL career, he played in 20 career games and started 18 of them. When healthy he was a serviceable player for the Ravens.

Although the shoulders have nagged him throughout his NFL career and it even forced Alex to miss the entire 2017 season.

Despite the injury history, Alex Lewis is a huge upgrade over the majority of the backups on the depth chart on the offensive line.