Jets Edge Rusher Will McDonald Trains His Focus on the Here and Now

So many other relationships are helping McDonald today to set up some productive tomorrows. The one with first-year head coach Aaron Glenn is significant.

“He’s real down-to-earth, man, man,” McDonald said of AG. “He treats me like his own son. I know he’s got my back.”

“The first thing that he said when he came to my office was he really wants to be good,” Glenn told reporters. “So now he wants to be coached how to be able to do that. I said the other day, and I’m not sure you guys really understood what I was saying, I kept saying ‘It’s coaching.’ That’s what I was talking about.

“He wants to be coached, he wants to be coached hard, and he wants to be coached how to do it the right way. And our guys are going to continue to do that with him.”

Teammate interactions are also paying dividends. At practice, McDonald may swing from his right side, where he will often go up against second-year LT Olu Fashanu, to his left, where the “new kid on the block” is first-round rookie Armand Membou.

“It’s fun, real fun,” McDonald said of honing his craft against two talented young tackles. “Membou, Olu and me, all three of us are in the room talking — boom, boom! Both of them, they’re going to be the best tackles in the league.”

And soon, 2023 Pro Bowl LB/edge Jermaine Johnson, who has started training camp on the Active/PUP list as he works on wrapping up his Achilles rehab, should be back at full speed.

“Me and Jermaine, we’re going to ball out, we’re going to do our thing,” McDonald said. “I trust him, he trusts me, we trust the D-line, the D-line trusts us. So once we get on that field, we trust each other enough to get the job done.”