C.J. Mosley sits quietly contemplating for a few seconds when someone says it is hard to believe he is entering his fifth year with the Jets.
“It’s crazy,” Mosley said after a recent training camp practice.
Along with Quinnen Williams, Mosley is the longest-tenured player on offense or defense for the Jets. He signed a five-year, $85 million contract in March 2019, leaving the Ravens to come to New York and try to turn the Jets around.
It has been a wild ride ever since for Mosley, who missed almost all of his two first seasons with the Jets. The general manager who signed him was fired two months later. The coach who lobbied to bring him here only coached him for two games. He had to reinvent himself for a new coaching staff and somehow stay positive through losing … lots of losing.
“My mindset was coming here to the New York Jets, I’m coming here to win a championship,” Mosley told The Post. “By the grace of God, if that works out, just stamp the legacy on there.”
A Super Bowl ring would cement Mosley’s place among Jets legends, but he already has been a driving force behind the culture changing inside the team. He has dealt with plenty of adversity since joining the Jets, but with the progress made in 2022 and the arrival of quarterback Aaron Rodgers, Mosley can see his vision for the Jets finally coming into focus.
“I can say my mindset and my goal hasn’t changed,” Mosley said. “It might have gotten derailed, the timing might not have been great, but this moment, what people are seeing now, this is what I imagined. This is why I’m here.”
The Jets lured Mosley to New York with a contract that included a whopping $51 million guaranteed. The offer was too good for Mosley to turn down and he liked what he saw with a team that had good, young players in Jamal Adams and Sam Darnold and was also adding veteran running back Le’Veon Bell.
“We had some weapons,” Mosley said. “Things looked good and then it didn’t work out.”
That is an understatement. Mosley was having the game of his life in Week 1 against the Bills with a fumble recovery and an interception for a touchdown along with six tackles. But he felt a tweak in his groin during pass coverage and he ended up playing just one more game that season — in Week 6, making the injury worse and requiring surgery.
A year later, he opted out of the 2020 season due to COVID-19 concerns. The team bottomed out at 2-14 without Mosley, and Adam Gase, the coach who pushed for the Jets to sign Mosley, was fired.
“For me, it was an eye-opener,” Mosley said. “The two things you don’t want to happen when you sign a new contract — you don’t want to get hurt and you don’t want to deal with a new coaching staff. I had that in the first two years. It humbled me a lot and put a lot of things in perspective.”
Mosley was at the Jets’ training center the day new coach Robert Saleh arrived in 2021. Saleh mentioned to Mosley that linebackers in his defense had to be able to cover. Mosley weight about 245 pounds at the time and was known more as a run-stuffer. When defensive coordinator Jeff Ulbrich repeated the message to Mosley about coverage a little later, he got their drift.
Mosley lost 15 pounds to fit into Saleh’s scheme.
“I would say my lifestyle outside of football changed,” Mosley said. “I stopped going out as much. I kind of focused on more how I can better on the field. When you turn your attention to one thing, other things are not as important anymore. It really was what are you going to give up to do your job and try to be great?”
Mosley began studying Saleh’s former linebackers — notably Fred Warner in San Francisco and Bobby Wagner in Seattle. He won a skeptical coaching staff over and went on to win the team’s MVP award in 2021. Despite his personal success, the 4-13 season was a tough one for him.
“There was a lot of losing,” Mosley said. “I’ve always been on a team where there might be one or two players where you see they’ve checked out because we’re not making the playoffs. I saw some people flat-out quit. It really hurt me. I knew what I was coming back from. Even though we weren’t winning, it was tough to see that. You expect more from your brothers and teammates you’re on the battlefield with every day. Once the people that wanted to leave left and we made some moves, had a big draft in ’22, you saw it right away.”
The additions of Sauce Gardner, Garrett Wilson and Breece Hall energized the team last year, but Mosley again saw the team miss the playoffs after its six-game losing streak to end the season.
This offseason, he watched like Jets fans as the Rodgers pursuit played out.
“For me, it was, ‘I’ll believe it when I see it,’ and when I saw it, I still didn’t believe it,” Mosley said.
He watched Rodgers’ appearance on “The Pat McAfee Show” from his parents’ home in Alabama.
“It was a cool experience,” Mosley said. “I’ve never watched anyone else say they wanted to come here. That was like a LeBron decision type deal.”
Mosley and Rodgers now compete each day on the practice field with Mosley acting as the quarterback of the defense and the two of them trying to outsmart each other.
“It’s upped everybody’s game,” Mosley said. “You can just feel how everybody picked up the pace from downstairs to upstairs, just practicing against him, going through walk-throughs against him, reading off his coverages, listening how he talks to the offense, it just builds confidence for everybody.”
With Rodgers now leading the offense, Mosley believes the Jets may now be able to realize his goal of winning a championship here after all the twists and turns since 2019.
“All of that crazy stuff led up to where we are right now. I’m very optimistic,” Mosley said. “I’ve always been that way even though it’s been tough.”
Mosley, 31, has five Pro Bowl selections, including last year, and been second-team All-Pro five times. He has made plenty of money and earned plenty of accolades.
Now, he is thinking about his legacy and how he can lead the current Jets to a Super Bowl and leave his mark on future Jets teams.
“Once I hang ’em up, I can say I did a great job if we get a ring out of it and once I’m done playing, these young guys can keep that going,” Mosley said. “They’re definitely on their way.”
