Michael Carter II ready to give Jets what they’ve been missing

Jets cornerback Michael Carter II has a simple answer when asked about his goals for the 2025 season. 

“Just be available,” Carter said after practice Thursday. 

This is understandable considering a frustrating 2024 season saw Carter deal with ankle and back injuries, causing him to miss four games and play sparingly in six others.

Now, Carter is back to full health and ready to bounce back. 

That starts with playing every game this year. Carter established himself as one of the best nickel corners in the NFL over his first three years. The Jets rewarded him before last season with a three-year, $30.75 million contract extension. Then, the injuries hit.

He suffered a high right ankle sprain in training camp that limited him in the first five weeks of the season. Then, a herniated disc in his back knocked him out of almost three games. He returned but was never quite the same player. 

Carter enters 2025 trying to regain the form that made the Jets happy to pay him last year. 

“Ultimately, I just want to be productive,” Carter said. “I want to be All-Pro. That will come with me being myself and me playing at the level that I do, just being able to trust my teammates and them being able to trust me.” 

The back injury was a weird one. Carter first felt pain down his right leg during warmups before the Jets’ Week 5 game against the Vikings in London. He played one snap in the game but could not go on. The Jets initially believed it was a hamstring injury. When an MRI showed his hamstring was fine, Carter returned to the hospital to get imaging on his back. That is when the herniated disc was found. 

Carter missed the next two games and returned against the Patriots in New England. But his comeback was short-lived. 

“Everything was good and I ended up making a tackle where I got bent in an odd way and that restarted everything,” Carter said. “It just reoccurred from there. That was super frustrating. I had to come to a place of finding peace with it and just understanding that in order to get better, I have to do this, this and this in the offseason.” 

Carter was in and out of the lineup the rest of the season and was never quite himself. When the offseason arrived, he began physical therapy to help his back and focused on building his core strength. 

The Jets will be counting on Carter, whose return could be a huge boost for a defense that slipped in 2024. Part of Carter’s motivation for this season is to elevate the Jets’ defense back to where it was. 

“I think part of it was the standard that we had and we built, it just wasn’t there week to week,” Carter said about last year. “We put it on display every now and again of who we were. We had these talks in the DB room of how do we get back, how do we reestablish that, our identity. Ultimately, it was just difficult to do that, for whatever reason. I think now we’re building that confidence back up and this is who we are. This is the standard that we set because we’ve done it at a high level. We’re ready to be at that level again.” 

Carter has impressed his new coaches early in camp. 

“[He’s] smart,” defensive coordinator Steve Wilks said. “He’s a guy that, as you know, at that nickel position, is a linebacker-DB. Can fit in the run game. Understands the blocking scheme, the pull scheme, getting over the top. He also has the ability to be able to adjust out in space. So, I like him a lot, and he’s shown up thus far.” 

Carter admits that he worried about letting the Jets down last year after they paid him, but now he is ready to make them look smart. 

“You’ve got to think like, ‘Oh, did we pay the wrong guy?’ That was in my head for a little bit,” Carter said. “But God’s time is perfect and everything happens for a reason. I was humbled in that moment. Now, I’m hungry to come back and be a part of something special.”