Last offseason, when the New York Jets were ready to move on from Aaron Rodgers after two seasons, they took a chance on a former first-round pick. Yet, signing Justin Fields to a two-year, $40 million contract didn’t pay off. He’d lead them to just a 2-7 record.
Now, the Jets will spend another offseason hunting for their future franchise QB. While Fields is under contract for 2026, the only other quarterback on the roster is undrafted rookie Brady Cook. Now they’ve added another arm to the mix.
On Monday, Tom Pelissero of the NFL Network revealed that the Jets signed 26-year-old QB Bailey Zappe to their 90-man roster. Zappe entered the league as a fourth-round pick when the New England Patriots made him the 137th overall selection in the 2022 NFL Draft.
Zappe ended up starting two games and winning both of them in his rookie season. A year later, he started six games for the Patriots, leading them to a 2-4 record. But he’d eventually be cut from the team before roster cutdowns as the 2024 season got underway.
The Kansas City Chiefs added Zappe to their practice squad just one day later. But two months after that, the QB-needy Cleveland Browns signed Zappe away from the Chiefs’ practice squad so he could join their active roster.
He then started a game for the Browns too, and aside from spending the 2024-25 offseason with the Chiefs, Zappe has bounced on and off Cleveland’s practice squad ever since.
The 6-foot-1, 215-pound QB has completed 62.1% of his passes for 2,223 yards (148.2 per game), while tossing 12 TD and 14 INT. At this point, he’s nothing more than developmental depth, but there could still be some untapped potential in the former fourth-round pick, and he does have nine games of starting experience.
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