Breece Hall is still a young man in the young man's game of the NFL. The Jets' bellcow back just turned 23 shortly before the full-squad minicamp in June, and while he's entering his third pro season, he's played only a season and a half due to his midseason rookie knee injury and he's logged just about one season's worth of 900 offensive snaps.
Yet Hall gives new meaning to the ageless sports adjective "ageless." He carries himself and plays like a 10-year vet, and he makes connections with his teammates, on both sides of the ball, like a 10th-year assistant coach.
Take Quincy Williams. Hall and Q have this thing going on, which Williams describes with the familiar phrase "iron sharpening iron."
"Breece, he's like one of those guys we're going against in Week 1, [the 49ers'] Christian McCaffrey," he said. "So with me going against him throughout practice, that's getting me ready for that. I actually call him out on the sideline, after practice, 'Hey, bro, can I get a few releases?' He's just helping me, but knowing that I'm one of the fastest linebackers in the league, I'm helping him also."
"Going against guys like Quincy, C.J. [Mosley], all of them every day, it's competitive and we all go back and forth with our one-on-ones, so it keeps everything fresh," Hall said. "It's not like I'm beating them all the time, which is what I'm trying to do every play, They got me a lot better since my rookie year. But now it's like I've had this offseason to actually get better and not just back to playing football, so it's just been feeling good to be back out there every day."
Which brings us to Hall the Healer, who brings a hopeful, restorative message with him across position boundaries, to, say, WR Mike Williams, who continues to rehab on the Jets' Active/PUP list from his own knee injury early last season,
"Me and him, we've actually had a lot of talks about it," Hall said of comparing rehabs. "I'll stop in the training room and say what's up to him and he'll ask me certain stuff, about how I dealt with soreness or how I feel making this cut or doing this and that. And I'm like, 'Yeah, bro, it just takes time.'
"It's been cool to talk with him, getting a relationship with him, and we obviously can't wait to have him back out there, hopefully sooner than later."
Hall could even be in the running for the title of Great Mediator, since he was asked about the sometimes tense-sounding exchanges among him, Aaron Rodgers, Garrett Wilson and others that made their way onto social media. Hall had a perfectly reasonable explanation that did not involve teammates coming at each other with weapons.
"We hold the highest standard for each other," he explained. "Aaron's not scared to get on me, I'm not scared to get on him, we're not scared to get on Garrett, Garret's not scared to get on us. We expect perfection from each other. And sometimes you have debates, and honestly, a lot of the time we'll be talking about the goofiest dumb stuff. So it's literally like big-brother-little-brother conversations.
"We all hate losing. We're just always getting on each other and telling each other, 'Let's go, let's make a play.' It's just upholding that standard that we have with each other every day."
None of this would mean much except we're talking about Breece Hall the Playmaker, and his game dovetails nicely with talk about McCaffrey and Rodgers, social media and standards. Breece has done some eye-popping things in his first 24 games. Last season he led all NFL backs with 76 receptions and 591 receiving yards (McCaffrey was third and second in those respective categories). Hall's 1,585 scrimmage yards were fourth among all players in the league and the most by a Jet since Curtis Martin's team-record 1,942 yards in 2004. And he's tied for the franchise record among RBs in 50-yard scrimmage plays with six, same as Freeman McNeil, who didn't get his sixth 50 until his 11th Jets season in 1991.
All that and yet Hall was "snubbed" when the NFL just completed unveiling its Top 100 Players for 2024. And Breece, a noted NFL netizen, has been known to speak confidently online about what he's done and what he plans to do as a pro in the years ahead.
Yet not being named as a Top 100 player at the start of this season rolled off his back.
"There's a lot of Jets on there — that's a positive," he said. "I enjoy watching the Top 100 videos to see what guys say about other players. As soon as they drop a new set of 10, I go and watch 'em. But I don't care that much. I have my respect around the league right now. Being Top 100 really doesn't matter that much.
"Winning football games, that's really it."
