Jets’ Breece Hall details injury recovery, relationship with Aaron Rodgers, expectations this season

Just over seven months removed from suffering a torn ACL against the Denver Broncos in Week 7 last year, Breece Hall is hopeful he can be back on the field for the Jets at the start of the upcoming season.

Talking to reporters on Wednesday afternoon, his 22nd birthday, the running back said his rehab has been moving along well and that he’s even begun to feel like his old self again.

“It’s going good. It’s been good to get back on the field, running around, doing drills, starting to cut and stuff,” Hall said. “I feel like myself again. Just progressing every week so it’s been good.”

With a healthy Hall, the Jets’ offense would have one of the more dynamic playmakers in the league after the 22-year-old burst onto the scene last year in less than half a season before going down due to injury.

In seven games, the second-round pick out of Iowa State rushed for 463 yards on 80 carries and had four rushing touchdowns, including one in Denver before getting hurt. In fact, Hall scored a touchdown in his final four games (all Jets wins) and was well on his way to an outstanding rookie season.

Clearly, other running backs took notice of Hall’s game because after getting injured and during his recovery process, Hall said a few of the league’s best backs around the league reached out to him to offer words of encouragement and advice during a difficult time.

“I talked to Saquon [Barkley] for a while after I first got hurt. Me and him had a few long conversations,” Hall said. “…Christian McCaffrey hit me up, I talked to Derrick Henry probably like a month or two ago. It’s been a lot of guys that have been cool… to get the respect of those guys meant a lot.”

So, is Hall worried that he won’t be able to replicate the level of success he found last season coming off a serious injury?

“I haven’t really thought about it too much just because the recovery part has been going so well,” he said. “It’s gonna be interesting, but I’ve had glimpses in these past two weeks of me cutting and just running around where I’m starting to feel like my old self again. So, I don’t think about that stuff too much. I’m me. At the end of the day, I feel like when I get back I’ll still be me.”

Now the only question is when exactly will Hall be back? Although there’s been optimism around the team that Hall can return in time for the Jets season opener against the Buffalo Bills on Monday, Sept. 11, is that realistic?

“I don’t know, I’ll be ready when I’ll be ready,” Hall said. “Obviously I hope I’m ready but you never know. I’m just taking it a week at a time and letting my knee do what it does… Everybody, myself, the coaches, my teammates, everybody wants me to be ready for Week 1, but at the end of the day, you gotta come back when you feel like you’re ready.”

So when will that be? Hall said he’ll “just know.”

When he does eventually return, Hall will be playing alongside a new quarterback in Aaron Rodgers. And despite not playing together in an actual game yet, the veteran and the second-year player have already developed a good relationship, even outside of football, going to a Devils game with some other teammates and getting some New York City pizza afterwards — just like a couple of normal New Yorkers.

“He’s a jokester,” Hall said about Rodgers. “He’s actually really cool, really funny. Me and him actually make fun of each other a lot so it’s been cool to be around him… me and him have actually gained a really good relationship.”

Hall has also been impressed with Rodgers’ leadership in meetings and knowledge of the offense.

“It’s actually been really cool because he really knows the offense like the back of his hand and we’ll be in the meeting and (Nathaniel) Hack(ett) will be talking and then Aaron will just butt in real quick and he’ll be like ‘Breece, what do you got on this?’ or ‘If I flip this play, what are you doing on this?’,” Hall explained.

“He asks these questions to the O-line, the tight ends, the receivers and the running backs and you feel that sense of calm, but you also know you gotta be on your stuff because he expects you to be in the spot because you know he’s gonna get you the ball if you’re in the right place.”

Another player who will be playing with Hall this season, albeit on the other side of the ball, is 2023 first-round pick defensive end Will McDonald who was a teammate of Hall’s on the Cyclones.

Hall sounded excited to reunite with his former teammate and also felt like he saw the pick coming.

“Probably a month before the draft, [Jeff] Ulbrich and [Aaron] Whitecotton kept coming up to me like ‘hey Breece, how’s Will? You like Will? Will, he’s really good he can rush the pass, he can rush the quarterback’ and I wasn’t really noticing it until two weeks before the draft and they just kept saying all this stuff… I just had a feeling, it was crazy.”