Jets' Gardner to sit out vs. Dolphins with hamstring injury. Sherwood voted team MVP

FLORHAM PARK, N.J. (AP) — New York Jets cornerback Sauce Gardner will sit out the season finale against the Miami Dolphins with a hamstring injury.

Gardner has been dealing with the issue since Week 13 and missed the Jets' last meeting with the Dolphins the following week. He started last week at Buffalo, but didn't return after leaving in the first half.

Gardner, an All-Pro and Pro Bowl selection in each of his first two NFL seasons, finished his third year with one interception, a sack, nine passes defensed and 49 tackles.

The Jets (4-12) will wrap up their season Sunday at MetLife Stadium, while the Dolphins (8-8) need to win and have Denver lose to Kansas City to reach the playoffs for the third straight season.

Interim coach Jeff Ulbrich said tight end Tyler Conklin (calf), defensive tackle Quinnen Williams (hamstring), right tackle Morgan Moses (knee) and right guard Alijah Vera-Tucker (ankle) will be game-time decisions. All four were listed as questionable, but Conklin and Vera-Tucker were limited participants at practice while Williams and Moses sat out.

Defensive tackle Leki Fotu was doubtful to play with a knee injury.

With safety Chuck Clark going on injured reserve this week with a torn pectoral muscle, Ulbrich said Ashtyn Davis would get the start opposite Tony Adams.

Linebacker Jamien Sherwood went from being a backup at the beginning of the season to being voted the Jets' MVP by his teammates.

“We had a lot of adversity this season and obviously it didn’t go the way we wanted,” he said after the team's final practice. "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.”

The 2021 fifth-round draft pick out of Auburn is a converted safety who started seven games at linebacker during his first three NFL seasons before moving into a full-time starting role after C.J. Mosley was injured this season.

He leads the Jets with 148 tackles, including a career-high 18 in New York's last game against Miami.

“You would be hard pressed to find a harder worker, not only in this building, but any building in the NFL,” Ulbrich said.

Sherwood is set to become a free agent this offseason.

“I’m just so excited for the future now for him,” Ulbrich said, “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.”

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Buffalo Bills wide receiver Keon Coleman (0) is stopped by New York Jets linebacker Jamien Sherwood (44) during the first half of an NFL football game, Sunday, Dec. 29, 2024, in Orchard Park, N.Y. (AP Photo/Gene J. Puskar)

New York Jets cornerback Sauce Gardner, left, breaks up a pass intended for Buffalo Bills wide receiver Keon Coleman (0) during the first half of an NFL football game, Sunday, Dec. 29, 2024, in Orchard Park, N.Y. (AP Photo/Adrian Kraus)

BEIRUT (AP) — Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah was killed in an Israeli airstrike last year while inside the militant group's war operations room, according to new details Sunday disclosed by a senior Hezbollah official.

A series of Israeli airstrikes flattened several buildings in Beirut’s southern suburbs on Sept. 27, 2024, killing Nasrallah. The Lebanese Health Ministry said six people died. According to news reports, Nasrallah and other senior officials were meeting underground.

The assassination of Nasrallah, who had led Hezbollah for 32 years, turned months of low-level strikes between Israel and the militants into all-out war that battered much of southern and eastern Lebanon for two months until a U.S.-brokered ceasefire took effect Nov. 27.

“His Eminence (Hassan Nasrallah) used to lead the battle and war from this location,” top Hezbollah security official Wafiq Safa told a news conference Sunday near near the site where Nasrallah was killed. He said Nasrallah died in the war operations room. He did not offer other details.

Lebanese media had reported that Safa was a target of Israeli airstrikes in central Beirut before the ceasefire but appeared unscathed.

During the first phase of the ceasefire, Hezbollah is supposed to move its fighters, weapons and infrastructure away from southern Lebanon north of the Litani River, while Israeli troops that invaded southern Lebanon need to withdraw all within 60 days. Lebanese army soldiers are to deploy in large numbers and alongside United Nations peacekeepers be the sole armed presence in southern Lebanon.

Lebanon and Hezbollah have been critical of ongoing Israeli strikes and overflights across the country and for only withdrawing from two of dozens of Lebanese villages it controls. Israel says that the Lebanese military has not done its share in dismantling Hezbollah infrastructure.

Hezbollah’s current leader Naim Kassem in a televised address Saturday warned that its fighters could strike Israel if its troops don’t leave the south by the end of the month.

Meanwhile, Israel’s defense minister Israel Katz echoed similar sentiments should Hezbollah's militants not head north of the Litani River and their infrastructure remain intact.

“If this condition is not met, there will be no agreement, and Israel will be forced to act on its own to ensure the safe return of the residents of (Israel’s) north to their homes,” he said.

Safa said that Parliament Speaker Nabih Berri, who negotiated the ceasefire deal with Washington, told Hezbollah that the government will meet with U.S. envoy Amos Hochstein soon. “And in light of what happens, then there will be a position,” said Safa.

Hochstein had led the shuttle diplomacy efforts to reach the fragile truce.

A woman holds up a poster of the slain Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah during a ceremony marking death anniversary of the late commander of the Iran's Revolutionary Guard expeditionary Quds Force, Gen. Qassem Soleimani, who was killed in a U.S. drone attack in 2020, at the Imam Khomeini grand mosque in Tehran, Iran, Thursday, Jan. 2, 2025. (AP Photo/Vahid Salemi)