Braelon Allen Camp Update — August 23: A Three-Week Audition Opens

The Jets' backfield opened up in front of Braelon Allen this week. Breece Hall left Monday's practice with a groin injury, and by Tuesday Aaron Glenn had put a two-to-three-week timeline on it, per the team's practice reports from Amanda Vogt and Eric Allen — an absence that runs through cutdown and leaves the 22-year-old as the senior healthy back in the room for the rest of the preseason. Glenn's endorsement, in a Jets on SI piece examining exactly this scenario, was specific to the profile: "everything I imagined from a RB of that size. 240 lbs, has good speed, can catch the ball."

The live evidence backing that endorsement is still last week's — four carries at 11 yards apiece against Tampa Bay, including the 31-yard touchdown, as the SI piece noted — because no Allen stat line surfaced in the compiled reporting from Friday's 17 to nothing win at Pittsburgh, where the offensive story was Geno Smith's perfect series and the backup passers. One of last week's watch items resolved itself by subtraction: Isaiah Davis, the other candidate for passing-down work, is out with a knee injury per the team's August eighteenth practice report, leaving Allen and Kene Nwangwu — who caught a red-zone touchdown from Cade Klubnik in Wednesday's practice — as the backs taking the August reps.

The June file on Allen was short on purpose: a healthy, young, cheap back behind a paid starter, with the only real question whether the burst survived the MCL. That question got its answer last week; this week the depth chart handed him something better than an answer — opportunity, at least temporarily. What to watch: how the carries divide in the preseason finale with Hall out, and whether Hall's timeline holds so the arrangement stays temporary. Cutdown to 53 is Sunday, August thirtieth. We'll check after cut day.

_Data via nflverse._