AP

The coach and G.M. who brought him to New York are no longer around, but Quinton Coples remains in the Jets’ long-term plans.

The Jets will pick up the fifth-year option on Coples’ rookie contract, Manish Mehta of the New York Daily News reports. Coples was the Jets’ first-round pick in the 2012 NFL draft, which means he has an option year for 2016. The Jets have decided to pick it up, and pay him $7.8 million next year.

It’s still possible that the Jets will decide to cut Coples next year and not give him that salary, as long as Coples can pass a physical. The option is only guaranteed for injury.

But the fact that the Jets have decided to pick it up suggests that they think he’s a part of their defense going forward.

When we took a look at the fifth-year option decisions this week, we put the Jets down as a “maybe” because we weren’t sure if new G.M. Mike Maccagnan and coach Todd Bowles saw him as a good fit for their plans. Coples hasn’t been great in his first three seasons, but he does have talent, and Maccagnan and Bowles apparently think that talent can help the Jets, this year and next.