Allen Lazard is frequently seen playing with a soccer ball during warmups and in between exercises at New York Jets practice. Throughout his career, he has also done it on game day. When some Jets fans watched Lazard playing with a soccer ball on X last week, they were outraged, unaware that this was something Lazard has done since his days with the Green Bay Packers to clear his mind and focus on the work at hand.
The problem isn’t what Lazard does with the soccer ball.
It’s not what he does with a football. That is, catching it.
According to Pro Football Focus, Lazard has the worst drop rate (20 percent) of 96 wide receivers with at least 25 targets this season, and other measures do not paint a glowing picture of his effectiveness. Lazard has definitely been a huge letdown for a failing Jets offense this season, which is starved for wide receiver output outside of standout Garrett Wilson, who leads the Jets with 64 catches, 695 yards, and three touchdowns while not receiving much support.
In recent weeks, wide receivers coach Zach Azzanni said he’s challenged the players in his room to emerge as the No. 2 receiver opposite Wilson.
“I’ve been doing that and nobody’s taken the bait just yet,” Azzanni said. “Hopefully someone steps up and is that guy and Garrett doesn’t need to press and be the only guy. He needs to do his job and we all need to follow suit and see if we can find someone to take that slack a little bit.”
That statement doesn’t reflect kindly on the $44 million elephant in the room: he has not lived up to the contract he signed this offseason, the richest of any free-agent wide receiver. In fact, at this rate, Lazard could go down as one of the worst free-agent signings in franchise history, on par with the likes of cornerback Trumaine Johnson.
He was a healthy scratch for last week’s game against the Miami Dolphins in favor of two undrafted rookies (Jason Brownlee, Xavier Gipson), a special teams player (Irv Charles) and Randall Cobb, who had been a healthy scratch for weeks before that. It was coach Robert Saleh’s decision to bench Lazard, calling it a “challenge” after the game for Lazard to “recapture the edge and who he is and the person that we have a lot of faith in. He’s a good football player. I do believe that.”
