For the third time in four seasons, the winner of the New York Jets’ Curtis Martin Team MVP Award is a linebacker with Alabama football roots.

The Jets announced Jamien Sherwood as the 2024 award winner on Friday. The former Auburn standout followed 2021 winner C.J. Mosley from Theodore High School and Alabama and 2023 winner Quincy Williams from Wenonah High School.

“It’s just a blessing,” Sherwood said on Friday. “Obviously, we had a lot of adversity this season. Obviously, it didn’t go the way we wanted. But to be recognized by my teammates, peers, future Hall of Famers, Pro Bowlers, All-Pro players, this means a lot to me. I feel like not only my on-the-field play was able to help me win this award, but just the way I am amongst the locker room, amongst my teammates, always trying to find some type of energy, some type of enthusiasm to boost everybody up. And I really feel like the person who I am was able to help me. …

“I didn’t think it would be me because, obviously, we got all these great players on our team. Me personally, I feel like I could give it to a bunch of other people. But again it’s just a blessing to be the one standing in these shoes today.”

The Jets’ adversity included Mosley’s neck injury, which limited the five-time Pro Bowler to 110 defensive snaps in four games. But Mosley’s injury also got Sherwood on the field regularly.

Sherwood enters the final game of the season leading the NFL with 95 solo tackles, and he ranks third in the league with 152 total tackles. Sherwood has 18 more total tackles in 2024 than any other Auburn alumnus has had in a season since tackles became a league-wide stat in 1994.

“For a guy that wasn’t a starter coming into the season, the way he responded, first of all to the adversity of losing C.J. and stepping into very big shoes, as we all know, and then to play as well as he did,” Jets coach Jeff Ulbrich said. “It’s a surprise because he had never done it. But it’s not a surprise because of the way this guy works and operates on a daily basis. You’d be hard-pressed to find a harder worker – not only in this building, but any building in the NFL.

“A guy who’s taken himself from a late-round safety convert to a legitimate linebacker in this league, I’m just so excited for the future now for him because it’s really planted seeds across the league as a guy that everybody’s going to want on their team. And he’s going to get rewarded for it, and he deserves every penny he’s going to get.”

Now the interim head coach, Ulbrich was New York’s defensive coordinator when the Jets chose Sherwood in the fifth round of the 2021 NFL Draft with the intent of turning the Auburn safety into an NFL linebacker.

“The big thing that we always look at, and I know it sounds funny, is length and arm length,” Ulbrich said of targeting Sherwood. “And he absolutely checks that box. It’s one of the top indicators for success as a linebacker historically in the NFL. And then after that, there was speed and movement and athleticism, obviously, from a guy that played the safety position in a lot of space. And then his makeup when we got to know him a little bit. You spend two seconds with this guy and you know he loves football and he’s willing to do whatever it takes to be successful in it. He checked all those boxes.

“The only thing he didn’t have was experience at the position and the necessary size at the time. Both those things he’s absolutely – he knows how to play his position at a high level now and his size and weight are exactly what they need to be, so his future’s so bright. He had tremendous success this year, but there’s more in the tank for him. I can’t wait to see him realize that potential.”

Sherwood has reached the end of his rookie contract, and he will become an unrestricted free agent on March 12 if the Jets don’t sign him to a contract extension by then.

“I got into this role due to injury sadly,” Sherwood said. “But for me, it was just about showing everybody that I could do it. A lot of people think that I’m undersized or just didn’t think I was the right fit for the job. But again, I went out there every week, showed it to the best of my ability, and, ultimately, I feel like it looks bright for me going forward, and again, I’ll just let God decide all that.”

With a 4-12 record, the Jets will finish their season against the Miami Dolphins at 3:25 p.m. CST Sunday at MetLife Stadium in East Rutherford, New Jersey. FOX will televise the game.

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Mark Inabinett is a sports reporter for Alabama Media Group. Follow him on X at @AMarkG1.