During the 2023 NFL regular season, only one player got more special-teams action than New York Jets linebacker Jamien Sherwood.

Cleveland Browns linebacker Matthew Adams was on the field for 435 special-teams plays. Sherwood had 420.

Sherwood has embraced his special-teams role following the examples of Jets wide receiver Justin Hardee, the AFC’s Pro Bowl Games special-teamer in 2022, and New York punter Thomas Morstead, who just completed his 14th NFL season.

“Like Justin Hardee, just seeing how he’s able to make it to the Pro Bowl, seeing how he’s able to feed his family,” Sherwood said. “And he just makes great plays for us, downing the ball inside the 5. Same thing with, like, Thomas Morstead. You see guys that take special teams serious. Me, not being a starter, a backup or whatever, I got to find my role on the team, so if it’s on special teams, that’s what it is.

“Again, embracing every opportunity I’m given, and when I found out you can make the Pro Bowl from special teams, I took it and ran with it, just trying to do my all, trying to get every tackle I can, just going down there so my man don’t make the play, just executing at a high standard just like it was defense, so I love special teams honestly because it gives everybody in the league an opportunity to be seen.”

Sherwood also played a career-high 194 defensive snaps in his third NFL season and made three starts in 2023.

Sherwood’s opportunities were limited because linebackers C.J. Mosley and Quincy Williams hardly came off the field and the Jets were more likely to use five defensive backs than three linebackers in their defensive formations as seven members of the secondary played more defensive snaps than Sherwood this season.

“I felt like every time I got my chance in there, I maximized my opportunity,” Sherwood said. “I’m appreciative of every opportunity I got. When I got my chance in there, I went and showed that I can do it, that I’m ready for the opportunity, the moment, and I succeeded, I feel like.”

Mosley played all but nine of New York’s 1,137 defensive snaps in 2023, and Williams played all but 44.

An All-State player at Theodore High School, a two-time consensus All-American at Alabama and a five-time Pro Bowler in the NFL, Mosley served as a role model and mentor when Sherwood joined the Jets from Auburn as a fifth-round pick in the 2021 NFL Draft.

A former Wenonah High School standout, Williams joined New York as a waiver claim after two seasons with the Jacksonville Jaguars. Like Sherwood, Williams had played safety in college. In 2023, Williams earned the Jets’ Most Valuable Player Award and first-team All-Pro recognition.

“At first when I got here, my blueprint was C.J., the vet, being molded into becoming a Mike backer,” Sherwood said. “Quincy got here that same year … so me becoming a backer and trying to learn the steps and transition and all that stuff, watching him actually do that and become an All-Pro player in this league, that’s big for me just because someone who was overlooked, same thing like me a safety turned backer, very undersized, and he just went out there and showed it every day. He proved the world wrong.”

What Sherwood would like to prove in 2024 is that he can make a similar jump.

“Just being more consistent,” Sherwood said about next season. “This year was my chance to just prove that I can do it again, that I can go out there and compete with the best. Next year’s just about being consistent every game, going out there being the player I know I can be, making plays. I’ll just say like Quincy, every game out there he made an excellent play, a crazy play, a flash play. I feel like I’m capable of the same standard. It’s just going out there and showing it.”

Sherwood started the opening game of his rookie campaign after transitioning from college safety to NFL linebacker during New York’s offseason program, training camp and preseason games.

An ankle injury sidelined him for the second game of the 2021 season, but he returned for the third and rejoined the starting lineup for next three games until he suffered a season-ending Achilles tendon tear on Oct. 24, 2021, against the New England Patriots. Sherwood was playing middle linebacker when he got hurt because Mosley was sidelined by a hamstring injury.

Sherwood returned to play in every New York game in 2022 and was on the field for 309 special-teams plays, the second-most on the team behind Hardee. But after playing 139 defensive snaps in five games in 2021, he played 25 in 17 contests in 2022, when the Jets had former Oxford High School standout Kwon Alexander, who’d been a Pro Bowl linebacker and NFL tackles leader.

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