The middle rounds of the NFL Draft was a wasteland for the LA Chargers for many years. Defensive back JT Woods is a prime example of this unfortunate phenomenon.
Taken with the No. 79 pick in the 2022 NFL Draft, Woods is one of the worst picks former GM Tom Telesco made in his decade-long tenure with the team (and there were a lot of bad picks). Woods was awful from the jump, proving that you can know if a draft pick is a bust early in their rookie season.
Woods never developed under former head coach Brandon Staley and was cut by current head coach Jim Harbaugh in his first season in LA. Since then, Woods has bounced around the league and he just landed on his sixth team since the start of the 2024 season: the New York Jets.
Jets sign Chargers draft bust JT Woods to the practice squad
This is the fifth practice squad Woods has signed with since being released by the Chargers last August. He's spent time with the Philadelphia Eagles, Chicago Bears, Seattle Seahawks, Las Vegas Raiders, and now, the Jets.
Woods has never actually played in a game for any of these games. His last NFL appearance was in 2023, when he 76 combined snaps in three games for the Chargers. All in all, the Chargers received 91 total mediocre defensive snaps out of their third-round pick in 2022. That is not a great return on the investment.
Hindsight is always 20/20 but there is a laundry list of players taken shortly after Woods in the 2022 NFL Draft that would have been fits on the Chargers. Georgia linebacker Nakobe Dean fell to the No. 83 pick because of health concerns despite being a consensus first-round talent.
It took some time, but Dean predictably turned into an impact player on the Super Bowl-winning Philadelphia Eagles last season. Even with his slow start and torn patellar tendon in last year's playoffs, he would have been a far better pick than Woods.
Literally anyone would have been.
Perhaps this is the team where Woods finally gets a chance to play and who knows, maybe he has somehow figured it out in his sixth NFL stop. Or this is just a master play by the Jets, who at 0-7, should be more interested in losing football games than winning them.
Playing Woods would certainly help the cause for getting the No. 1 overall pick.