Alabama Pro Bowler talks up young Auburn linebacker

With the New York Jets the first NFL team to start training camp in preparation for the 2023 season, linebacker Jamien Sherwood could be getting ready for a much bigger role than he had in the 2022 campaign.
Jets middle linebacker C.J. Mosley sounds confident in Sherwood’s ability to get the job done for New York.
“I’m excited for what Jamien Sherwood is going to be bringing this year,” Mosley said as the Jets reported for training camp this week. “As a young linebacker, it can be a lot to go from one position and learn a different position, and he’s been at Mike, Will and Sam since he’s been here. He’s one of the smartest players on our defense and on this team. He’s a hard worker – one of the hardest workers in the weight room and the classroom.
“I really feel like he has a great chance this camp to really show what he’s about, and I want to make sure I’m also doing a great job of kind of keeping him level-headed because he can ask a lot of questions and kind of think a little too much. But he’s a playmaker at the end of the day, and if you take that away from him, then you can kind of get lost when you’re trying to make plays.”
A two-time consensus All-American at Alabama, Mosley has five Pro Bowl seasons in the NFL and recorded 326 tackles in the past two seasons for New York, the fourth-most in the league during that span.
A former Auburn safety, Sherwood joined the Jets in the fifth round of the 2021 NFL Draft. He started the opening game of his rookie campaign after transitioning to linebacker.
An ankle injury sidelined him for the second game, but he returned for the third and rejoined the starting lineup for next three games until he suffered a season-ending Achilles tendon tear on Oct. 24, 2021, against the New England Patriots. Sherwood was playing middle linebacker when he got hurt because Mosley was sidelined by a hamstring injury.
Sherwood returned to play in every New York game in 2022 and was on the field for 309 special-teams plays, the second-most on the team. But after playing 139 defensive snaps in five games in 2021, he played 25 in 17 contests last season.
Mosley played 98 percent of the Jets’ defensive snaps in 2022. Quincy Williams made 106 tackles in 15 games as New York’s second-most active linebacker last season, and the Jets re-signed him in March to a three-year, $18 million contract extension.
But New York did not re-sign its No. 3 linebacker, Kwon Alexander. The former Pro Bowler started 12 games and made 69 tackles in 2022, but he remains an unrestricted free agent.
Alexander gave the Jets a trio of former Alabama high school standouts at linebacker as an Oxford alumnus. Mosley played at Theodore, and Williams at Wenonah.
New York held its first training-camp practice on Thursday, and the Jets will put on pads for the first time on Tuesday.
New York is preparing to play in the kickoff contest of the NFL’s preseason schedule, the annual Hall of Fame Game. The Jets and Cleveland Browns will square off at 7 p.m. Aug. 3 at Tom Benson Hall of Fame Stadium in Canton, Ohio. NBC will televise the game.