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Becton is under contract for 2023, due to make a fully guaranteed $3.1 million in the final year of his rookie deal. By then, he is likely to have missed 35 of a possible 50 games because of injuries. He dislocated his right kneecap in the 2021 opener, resulting in season-ending surgery. There is virtually no chance the team will exercise his fifth-year option for 2024.

“Everything happens for a reason…I know God and my Grandma got me up there I JUST KNOW IT! TRUST!#IMSTILLHIM #4GK,” Becton posted on Instagram.

For now, the Jets have a pressing need at right tackle. The current starter in camp is Chuma Edoga, a 2019 third-round pick who has 12 starts in his NFL career. He began training camp on the roster bubble, which explains why the organization is seeking an upgrade. The team also has career backup Conor McDermott, who is out one to two weeks with a sprained ankle.

The Jets are in talks with former Seattle Seahawks free agent Duane Brown, a five-time Pro Bowl selection who turns 37 on Aug. 30. Brown, who visited with the Jets last weekend, is in “phenomenal shape,” general manager Joe Douglas said Tuesday in an interview with WFAN radio. Asked about their interest in Brown, Douglas said “the wheels are in motion.”

Other teams also are showing interest in Brown, a source said.

Douglas passed on the top tackles in the draft even though there were questions about Becton’s durability and weight. Now the Jets are scrambling to find an experienced tackle to start opposite George Fant. They drafted Max Mitchell (Louisiana) in the fourth round, but he’s regarded as a developmental prospect.

The Jets were in talks with Brown before Becton’s injury, which occurred Monday in practice. He hurt his knee in a noncontact offensive line drill, but remained in practice even though he was limping badly. Minutes later, in an 11-on-11 period, he was knocked backward by defensive end John Franklin-Myers and his knee appeared to bend awkwardly as he fell.

Writhing in pain, Becton — listed at 6-foot-7, 363 pounds — removed his shoulder pads and limped to the locker room. After practice, Saleh said the preliminary tests were encouraging and there was no reason to think it was a significant injury.

With the help of video analysis of the play, doctors determined there was no damage to the main ligaments. Saleh said the knee was “stable.” Later, an MRI revealed the damage to the kneecap.

Asked why the team didn’t pull Becton out of practice after the initial injury, Saleh said, “Hindsight is 20/20. We can play that game, for sure.” He said it was “going to take a little while for his knee to get going” because the team had a day off Sunday, which followed a scrimmage on artificial turf. Becton’s reps in the scrimmage Saturday night were limited because it was his first time on turf since his knee surgery last September, Saleh said.

Becton has been a polarizing player. He flashed immense potential as a rookie, but has since battled injuries and a weight problem. He was up to 400 pounds last year during his rehab, and he frustrated the organization by being overweight at the June minicamp.

On Tuesday, Saleh defended Becton against his critics.

“These are young men and sometimes, with social media in this world, we dehumanize these athletes in the worst way imaginable,” he said. “Mekhi has walked in this building and he has taken every single punch you can get from every which way, and he shows up, and he works his tail off and he grinds every single day.

“He shows up to camp and he’s fighting to get himself back in shape. He’s got videos of him vomiting, and people are throwing shade. And he’s limping … and he’s fighting for his family and himself, for his teammates, for this organization, for this fan base. He’s doing everything, and then everybody wants to drop him like a wet rag. That ain’t the case. We love Mekhi.”

Athletics were a big part of the Boselli household in Boulder, Colorado. Water skiing, snow skiing, basketball, football, softball, tubing … whatever. And Big Tony, despite working long hours managing a fast-food restaurant, was always part of it.

Tony Boselli Sr. on Tony Boselli Jr.

Boselli loved that his father always made time for him and his siblings and said he’ll always cherish those moments, which invariably seemed to revolve around sports.

“He’d come home from work every day and we’d do something in the backyard,” Boselli said. “And my favorite was either football or basketball. We played one-on-one [basketball] until I was in high school, and we would go in the backyard and play catch. It was never a situation where I would work on offensive line drills. I didn’t want to be an offensive lineman at that age. I wanted to be a quarterback or a linebacker.”

Before that could happen, however, Boselli had to start playing organized football. The minimum age to play Pop Warner football in Boulder was 10, but 9-year-old Little Tony wanted to play so badly that Big Tony told a little white lie.

“I wanted to put the pads on. And so my dad, we went to the place, the rec center, and we signed up and [the person registering players] goes, ‘How old’s your son?’ ” Boselli remembered. “[Big Tony] goes, ‘He’s 10.’ Made up a birthdate and everything so that I could play football.”

“I would like to share with him how proud I am of what he’s accomplished throughout his years of football … [and] being a man.”

Big Tony on Little Tony

For Big Tony, family was everything. If Little Tony went somewhere, he took his younger siblings. Spending time together and creating traditions that continue to this day was important.

“When we go out to our beach house in California, and we used to do that as a vacation all the time, he always made sure every morning we all woke up together as a family and walked down and got doughnuts from the same doughnut shop,” Michael said. “And then at nighttime after dinner we always walk down the boardwalk and all have ice cream together. Still to this day when we all go out there as a family, no matter if it’s all of us as a group or just individual families, we all do that still as a family.”

Even when the kids grew and married and moved — Little Tony to USC and then Jacksonville when the Jaguars selected him second overall in 1995 — the family vacations continued.

Until Big Tony was too sick with cancer to go.

Making Big Tony’s congratulatory video

Angi Boselli’s heart broke.

Not because her husband told her in early 2021 that he hadn’t made the Hall of Fame after his fifth time as a finalist, but because his father was sick and unlikely to be around if Boselli eventually did make it.

“Oh, I was devastated,” Angi said. “I know I teared up. And like I said, it was an instant, ‘Oh yes he will.’ “

That’s when Angi decided she had to get her father-in-law on video for her husband. She enlisted family friends Eric and Kay Murphy to help with the logistics of setting up the video shoot. There was just one minor problem: convincing Big Tony to do it.

“He has done a lot more than just play football to get to this position. He is truly a great man.”

Big Tony on Little Tony

“The tricky part was convincing his dad we were doing this for everybody,” Angi said. “We were making a video, and he would not have agreed to it had he known that we were trying to get his final thoughts or that we thought that he may not make it. His dad was a fighter. He was really believing that all of his cancer treatments were going to work.

“When he did the video, it was under the pretense we were getting coach [Tom] Coughlin, a bunch of ex-players, a bunch of friends. In fact, we did do that, but [Big] Tony’s video was the first one shot. And the rest all came organically.”

The video was shot at Big Tony’s Jacksonville Beach condo. Eric Murphy did the interview, and members of the Jaguars video/production team filmed it. They shot it in late April 2021.

On May 31, the cancer that had been ravaging Big Tony’s body for years took its final toll.

‘Angi, you need to turn this off. It’s so embarrassing.’