Man and zone coverage are two very different skills, each requiring its own set of abilities and traits that are necessary to achieve success. For that reason, it makes sense to evaluate the coverage talent of individual players separately: how do they fare in man and how do they fare in zone?
It seems reasonable to believe that the Jets will most likely be a zone-heavy defense in 2020. The Pete Carroll-led Seattle defense that both Robert Saleh and Jeff Ulbrich hail from is consistently one of the most zone-heavy defenses in football. Saleh’s 2019 San Francisco defense (when the entire unit was healthy as opposed to its injury-ravaged 2020 season) played zone at a top-five rate.