New York Jets: Brian Winters avoids serious injury, update on his return

The New York Jets suffered an injury scare in preseason Week 1 vs the New York Giants. Here’s an update on Brian Winters and what’s next.

After struggling with offensive line depth since the retirement of Nick Mangold (and even before that), it appears that the New York Jets will be getting a big boost from the injured list before Week 1 of the 2019 season, as Brian Winters is cleared of any serious injury.

Unfortunately for the Jets, among all of the fantastic moves they made during the 2019 offseason, the offensive line still has many question marks.

Brian Winters went down in the first quarter of the first preseason game vs the New York Giants. He was immediately ruled out for the rest of the game.

Although after further evaluation, Winters did not suffer any serious injuries. Manish Mehta of the New York Daily News was first on the news.

Sources: Jets RG Brian Winters’ shoulder injury is not believed to be serious. The team expects him to be ready for Week 1 against the Bills. No surgery planned. NYJ will take a smart, conservative plan for rest of preseason.

— Manish Mehta (@MMehtaNYDN) August 11, 2019

According to several media reports, Winters will be ruled out for the rest of the preseason but is expected to be ready for the Week 1 matchup vs the Buffalo Bills.

Unfortunately for New York, Winters has been quite injury prone since being drafted by the team in the 2013 NFL Draft (third round):

Out of 96 maximum games Brian could’ve possibly played in the last six years, he’s only played in 80 of them. Winters has missed time with a torn ACL (2014), concussions (2016), and an abdomen injury (2017). 

Although when healthy, Brian can be a very reliable player and will be helped immensely by the talented offense that this franchise is putting together.

Since taking over as the Jets general manager, Joe Douglas has added former All-Pro center Ryan Kalil from retirement to this offensive line.

Also shortly after making that headline, Joe Douglas made another by trading for former starting offensive lineman Alex Lewis.

With the additions of Kelechi Osemele and Ryan Kalil, the Jets have seemingly solidified one of, if not their biggest weakness, but it’s the homegrown Winters that could be the most important aspect of the Jets O-Line in 2019.