The Jets have contacted LB Adalius Thomas about joining the team. The move would reunite him with his former defensive coordinator Rex Ryan, who he played under for 6 seasons in Baltimore.
The Jets have reached out to former Patriots LB Adalius Thomas about joining the team after finding out this morning that LB Calvin Pace will miss 4-6 weeks with a broken foot.
“I would say that would be a possibility,” Ryan said to ESPN.com about Thomas joining the Jets. “I wouldn’t rule that out. There’s some other things involved, other factors involved. Sometimes what really makes sense might not make sense to the organization. We’ll see.” The New York Daily News also confirmed that the two sides have already talked about a possible deal.
If Thomas joins the team it’ll reunite him with Ryan, who he played for during his first 6 seasons in Baltimore. During that time, the duo won a Super Bowl together and Thomas was named to 2 Pro Bowls. He added an All-Pro selection in 2006, recording 83 tackles and 11 sacks that year.
After the season Thomas signed a lucrative contract with New England, but quickly fell out of favor with coach Bill Belichick, even getting kicked out of the team’s facilities last year for showing up late to a meeting. The Patriots eventually released him in April.
With the highly-productive Pace out and an aging Jason Taylor as his only replacement, Ryan sees Thomas as a perfect solution to the problem.
“With us, he’d be a guy that would give you depth,” Ryan said. “He was a tremendous player in our sub package. A lot of the defenses that we came up with that are looked at as maybe unique in the league was because of his physical abilities and his mental abilities. He definitely knows this system. He’d fit right back in.”
Thomas finished 2009 with 34 tackles and 3 sacks in 14 games, a disappointing season by his standards.