FLORHAM PARK, N.J. — The Florida sun was just starting to appear on the horizon as Tim Caffey drove up to Jensen Beach High School at about 6:15 a.m. in early November 2017. As he glanced at the football stadium, covered in fading darkness, he saw a solitary figure running up and down the steps of the bleachers. Surely, this wasn’t one of his players.
Caffey, the Jensen Beach coach then and now, had instructed them to take a week off after the season. It was a grueling campaign, and he wanted the players to rest and recharge before the final team meeting and equipment return. The offseason was only four days old, so this had to be an intruder.
“Some kid jumped the fence,” Caffey thought to himself. “Somebody is on our campus that shouldn’t be on our campus.”
He moved closer … and closer … until he recognized the stranger. It was Jamien Sherwood, his star safety and future middle linebacker of the New York Jets.
“What are you doing, dude?” the incredulous coach asked.
“Coach,” the Auburn-bound senior said, “if I’m not working, somebody is gaining on me.”
For years, Sherwood worked in the shadows, overcoming shyness, a position change and a devastating Achilles rupture. After serving an apprenticeship under recently retired C.J. Mosley, he is the new leader of the Jets’ defense, backed by a revamped front office that rewarded him with a three-year, $45 million contract.
Dawn finally has arrived for Sherwood.
SHERWOOD WAS A natural. On the first play of his high school career — as a freshman, no less — he intercepted a pass and returned it for a touchdown. On Florida’s East Coast, where Friday Night Lights are everything, he gained instant name recognition.
Different story in the NFL. A fifth-round pick in 2021, it took until last season before he established himself as a fixture on defense. He replaced the injured Mosley in Week 2, finished as the league’s co-leader in solo tackles (95) and was voted team MVP by his teammates.
It’s no coincidence that the first significant contract doled out by first-year coach Aaron Glenn and new general manager Darren Mougey went to Sherwood, who was anointed the centerpiece on defense.
“He’s definitely the glue,” defensive coordinator Steve Wilks said.
With that comes huge responsibility. Not only does he relay the calls to his teammates in the huddle — basically, he’s the quarterback of the defense — but Sherwood needs to be a vocal leader.
He can handle the calls. He did that as a freshman at Jensen Beach, where two all-state seniors, recognizing his precocious knowledge of the game, convinced Caffey their young teammate was worthy of the job. He’s what some would describe as a football nerd, so obsessed with X’s and O’s that he buries himself in his computer tablet as soon as he leaves the stadium.
It’s the stuff aside from the calls — speaking up off the field, holding teammates accountable — that forces him out of his comfort zone. Growing up, Sherwood recoiled in social settings. He cringed in the spotlight. He was an introvert.
“Oh, God, was he ever,” his mother, Venetia Johnson, said. “His eye contact was almost nonexistent. You couldn’t get him to look at you.”
Sherwood said he had only four or five friends in high school. At Auburn, it took him six months to make a friend. His first roommate, Shedrick Jackson, nephew of Auburn legend Bo Jackson, was equally shy. Sherwood said it took them a few months before they started hanging out.
His first roommate with the Jets was Hamsah Nasirildeen, who was also a 2021 draft pick making the conversion from college safety to NFL linebacker. They had a lot in common, but it was three months before they did anything socially, according to Sherwood.
“I always knew I had leadership tendencies and leadership qualities, but I never could be one until I got out of my shell,” Sherwood said. “The one thing about being a leader is, you can’t be afraid of what people are going to think of you, and you can’t be afraid to hurt someone’s feelings.”
Caffey said he worked with Sherwood in high school, trying to get him to open up in public. His mother credited former Auburn coach Gus Malzahn, saying he made sure Sherwood did his share of media interviews to “break him out of his shyness.”
Their efforts worked. If you didn’t know his background, there would be no way to tell he was bashful. He handles news conferences with aplomb. In one-on-one interviews, he makes eye contact and exudes confidence. Former Jets coach Robert Saleh, who was instrumental in Sherwood’s conversion from safety to linebacker, always praised him for his communication skills.
Imagine that. The fidgety kid who preferred to be alone is now the CEO of the Jets’ defense.
SHERWOOD ENTERED THE draft in 2021 as a 216-pound safety with a sluggish time in the 40-yard dash (4.76 seconds). He was a tweener, not fast enough to be an elite safety, not big enough to play linebacker.
The Jets made him a linebacker and told him to pack on some pounds. It was a three-year process, delayed by his Achilles injury in 2021, but now, he’s a chiseled 230 pounds with excellent speed for the position.
“He plays with leverage, he has long arms and he’s able to disengage from anybody that tries to block him,” Glenn said. “Those are the things I like about him, and he’s damn good in coverage. He’s a former safety, so he understands that aspect of the game.”
Gone are the days of 245-pound, off-ball linebackers — the downhill run-pluggers. Spread offenses have forced defenses to use smaller, faster linebackers. San Francisco 49ers star Fred Warner (6-foot-3, 230 pounds), a former college safety/linebacker hybrid, is the new prototype.
Sherwood knows plenty about Warner. When Sherwood was sidelined with his torn Achilles, he was told to study tape of three linebackers — Warner, Mosley and Bobby Wagner, the 10-time Pro Bowler now on the Washington Commanders. Sherwood learned something different from each one:
Warner: how a former safety plays the position. Mosley: how to utilize expertise and smarts. Wagner: how to pack a punch and be physical.
“Honestly, without that injury, I would’ve never done what I needed to do to get to this point,” said Sherwood, who used the downtime to gain much-needed weight. “Being sidelined, I got closer to God. I had time to get my body right, with rehab and stuff like that.”
Sherwood always had tremendous instincts. In Jensen Beach, people still talk about the time he played three positions on one play and made an interception. In a game against Heritage High, he walked up to a linebacker spot from deep safety, then sprinted to the flat a split-second before the snap to play cornerback. Through film study, he anticipated the play and, sure enough, picked off the pass.
“I’ve never seen anything like that in my life,” Caffey said.
Sherwood, who watches two to three hours of film every night during the season, prides himself on knowing what’s about to happen. He will watch the same play over and over, maybe up to 10 times, hoping to discern a small tell — perhaps a slight variation in a blocker’s stance.
“I don’t put the iPad down until I fully gain what I need to gain out of it,” Sherwood said. “It’s not even about me, it’s about how to help the man next to me. How can I get the guy next to me to play even faster?”
He’s always had an analytical mind, according to those who know him best. Maybe that explains why he joined his school’s chess club in the third grade and developed into a formidable player. He once played former Michigan coach Jim Harbaugh on a recruiting trip. Sherwood hasn’t played in a while, but he promises he’d need only three moves to checkmate an unsuspecting opponent.
On the field, he has learned that he can’t play middle-linebacker chess in silence. In his role, communication is key.
“Y’all don’t know, but Sherwood [never] talked to nobody,” fellow linebacker Quincy Williams said. “Now, you see him playing around with everybody. You see him being more vocal, taking those chances in practice and stuff, changing the plays on his own. I like that. He’s playing a little Madden, so when game time comes, he has some of those aspects that C.J. had.”
IN HIGH SCHOOL, Sherwood’s daily regimen started at 5 a.m. on the beach, where he’d perform agility drills in the sand. He’d go home, shower, go to school and then to football practice. His body started cramping up, so his coaches told him to dial it back when they sensed he was overexerting himself.
They didn’t have much luck with that.
One time, nursing a minor injury, Sherwood was told to sit out practice. When the coaches’ backs were turned, he snuck into a tackling drill, sans pads.
“All of a sudden, I hear a loud whack,” Caffey said. “I turn around and this kid is over there, hitting kids with no pads on. And it sounded like he had pads on. No fear. He was leveling kids.”
Loud noise from a quiet man.
With the Jets, he waited patiently behind Mosley. When Sherwood’s opportunity came unexpectedly after Mosley suffered a toe injury against the Tennessee Titans, he made 12 tackles (one behind the line) and broke up a pass in the Jets’ victory.
That performance convinced Sherwood he was good enough. To celebrate, he treated himself to an expensive dinner in Manhattan. He didn’t know it at the time, but Mosley wouldn’t play another game because of a neck injury that flared up later in the season. He made a profound impact on Sherwood.
“Even though he’s from Alabama, and we had our little Roll Tide-War Eagle thing, trust me, there’s nothing greater than the gift C.J. gave to Jamien,” Venetia Johnson said. “If it wasn’t for him taking Jamien under his wing, the question is: Where would Jamien be?”
Armed with knowledge passed down from Mosley, not to mention an indefatigable work ethic, Sherwood is prepared to validate the commitment the organization made to him — a $30 million guarantee for a once-undersized linebacker with only 23 career starts.
Know this: While you’re sleeping, Sherwood will be putting in the work somewhere.
“I feel like I have to play better,” Sherwood said, “because I owe it to the people who believed in me.”
