Jets’ John Metchie III finally has dream opportunity

At two different points, John Metchie III’s football future was in flux.

Any of the potential he’d flashed faded into the background.

As a freshman at Saint James School in 2014, Metchie found out about an enlarged heart condition that sidelined him for most of the season.

Then, after already tearing his ACL in the 2021 SEC Championship game, doctors diagnosed Metchie with acute promyelocytic leukemia before his first training camp with the Texans in 2022, and he missed his entire rookie year.

Mike Still, his assistant coach in high school who keeps in touch with Metchie, vividly remembers the conversations after the heart condition, asking, “Is this it?” It was a fluke situation — “You’re used to ankle injuries,” Still said.

The leukemia was out of nowhere too, current Saint James head coach and former assistant Colin Ponder said.

But Metchie fought back from both. He blossomed at Saint James, spent a prep year at The Peddie School and joined a stacked receiver room at Alabama. He returned to practice with the Texans in 2023, logged his first games that year and caught his first touchdown pass the following season.

If the diagnoses were filled with uncertainty and fear, then the milestones on his journey back served as emotional touchpoints.

Metchie’s talent and his feel-good story hit obstacles to the field, though. Talented receivers rooms, most recently featuring the Eagles’ A.J. Brown and DeVonta Smith, blocked his lane to consistent snaps.

But after getting traded to the Jets this week with a 2027 sixth-round pick in exchange for cornerback Michael Carter II and a 2027 seventh-round pick, Metchie has perhaps his clearest path to the lineup yet.

Gang Green’s depth has been an issue all year, and top options Garrett Wilson and Josh Reynolds entered the bye week injured. So on his third team in 10 weeks, Metchie has a chance to finally become a version of the receiver everyone expected.

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“Right now in the NFL, he is dying for that shot,” Still said Friday. “I think he’s been, since Alabama, in receiver rooms that have been unbelievably stacked. I’m not saying that in New York, that’s not the case, but I feel like there’s an opportunity for him to be involved way more — and I think that’s what we’re all anxious for for him.”

Last week, Still knew something was up. He’d found clips of the Eagles practice that seemed to show Metchie practicing with the first-team offense, and with Brown set to miss their game Sunday, Still expected an increased number of snaps after Metchie had logged just seven combined the previous two weeks and 22 for the season.

But then Metchie only appeared for nine offensive snaps and didn’t log a target.

Two days later, Still found out about the trade. He instantly texted Metchie, “J-E-T-S Jets Jets Jets,” and when the pair spoke that day, Still sensed his former player’s excitement about getting another shot.

“I think he’s anxious to be put into a system where those talents matter,” Still said. “Not that they didn’t matter anywhere else, but I think he just wants to be a contributor more than a superstar.”

There were plenty of moments when Metchie’s ceiling certainly seemed to push into the upper tier, though. He shared wideout depth charts at Alabama with names that included Smith, Jerry Jeudy, Jaylen Waddle and Jameson Williams.

He collected 1,142 receiving yards and eight touchdowns on 96 catches as a senior in 2021 before tearing his ACL.

When the Crimson Tide crushed a Justin Fields- and Garrett Wilson-led Ohio State team in the national championship game the previous year, Metchie contributed eight catches for 81 yards. His new quarterback and receiving partner witnessed what he could add on the sport’s biggest stage firsthand.

Metchie caught 16 passes for 158 yards once he returned from leukemia treatment in 2023 before adding 254 receiving yards the following year while sharing targets in Houston with Nico Collins and Tank Dell. He brings juice, Devin Singletary, his Texans teammate in 2023, told The Post’s Ryan Dunleavy, someone who can run all the routes and be savvy.

It’s all about finding the right situation, with a sputtering Jets offense his latest place to construct a consistent role.

And when he does, Singletary said, “The sky’s the limit, for sure.”

“You don’t wish that on anybody,” Singletary said of Metchie’s 2023 return. “But for him to make it out of that and still be able to do what he loves to do and do it at a high level, it’s big. It’s real big. It was really emotional, but he a champ, man, and he’s still proving it. He’s gonna continue to prove it.”

— The Post’s Ryan Dunleavy contributed reporting