For a proud man who missed a solitary game to injury over his previous three seasons with the Jets, C.J. Mosley summed up his 2024 NFL season in five simple words: "It was a tough year."
Certainly for the Green & White, who finished with a 5-12 record and out of the playoffs for the 14th straight season. And certainly painful for Mosley as he watched from the sideline for all but four games as he dealt with a nagging toe injury and a painful herniated disk in his neck.
"Just reflecting back, started the year off great [a pick-6 in the opener against Buffalo] when I first got here as a Jet and, you know, had that crazy [groin] injury that put me off of the year," Mosley said about the 2019 season, when he was signed in free agency. "[This year] it was tough to pretty much miss most of the season. It started with the weird toe injury, then the non-contact neck injury. So I mean, it was... personally, it was tough."
Mosley played in only two games in 2019, then opted out of the 2020 season during the coronavirus pandemic. This past season, he hurt his toe in the Week 2 win at Tennessee, was inactive for two games, returned to face Buffalo and Pittsburgh, but then encountered that neck injury before the start of the Jets' game at New England and was on the shelf for the rest of the season.
His able replacement, Jamien Sherwood, had a breakout season in his fourth year in the NFL and won the Curtis Martin Team MVP Award. A fifth-round pick out of Auburn in 2021, Sherwood finished with 154 total tackles, tied for the fourth most in the NFL, and became the second Jets player to reach 150 tackles in a season since 2006. Mosley was the first.
"Sherwood, he's always been a talker," Mosley said. "So just watching him just kind of really get more comfortable being in that position, being in those situations, just watching him play, man, it made me really happy. Also made me sad. How I wanted to be out there playing with them, that's what I care about, just seeing my teammates ball."
As much burning he's had in his neck as he works to get back to full fitness ahead of his 33rd birthday in June, Mosley has experienced change in the organization and will again. He said he will have treatment for his neck, but he said "it's hard to really test it, unless you actually hitting people."
"One thing that Brick [interim head coach Jeff Ulbrich] always talked about is when we step on a white line it's on the players," Mosley said. "You control what you can control. Whoever they bring [as the next GM and coach] in we hope it's for the right reasons to help us excel and get over the hump. As far as players in the offseason, just time to get your mind and your body right. But whenever you put those cleats back on, just have the mindset that we got some work to do."
