Mehta: Jets brain trust believes Sam Darnold, already operating on advanced plane, will show enough in August to be Week 1 starter By MANISH MEHTA AUG 01, 2018 | 10:30 PM He has an indefinable quality that can’t be logged on a stat sheet or measured with numbers, something that makes him so tantalizing to so many people in this multi-billion-dollar organization. He has an “It Factor” that few possess and fewer can fully explain. He also is destined to make a lot of mistakes that might ultimately help turn him into a star one day. Sam Darnold’s capacity to process information over the next several weeks will shape his development during this critical phase of the Jets evaluation process. Whether or not the team hands him the keys to the kingdom in time for the Monday night season opener against the Lions on Sept. 10 will have much more to do with the rookie quarterback’s ability to prove his football I.Q and resilience than to be perfect. Darnold, frankly, was so good in only his second practice of camp after his four-day holdout. He’s already operating on an advanced plane for a rookie, making smart pre-snap reads and post-snap decisions, while displaying fluid mobility in and around the pocket. On Wednesday, he did everything from properly identifying a blitz to communicating the corresponding hot reads to his teammates to eluding pressure by stepping up in the pocket and completing a pass to hitting pass catchers in stride on designed rollouts to making quick post-snap decisions that prevented turnovers. In layman’s terms, Darnold is one smart dude with a desire to learn more and more. I like watching how he deals with making mistakes and bouncing back,” general manager Mike Maccagnan said. “I know Todd (Bowles) and the coaches are very high on him… They’ve thrown a lot at him and he’s assimilated quite a bit. And I know Todd, in terms of practices, does a lot of things blitz-wise. So, it’s not always sort of scripted, where the offense knows what the defense is going to do. You watch Sam do things (when) maybe other times guys would play slower. He’ll have his little glitches, but I think he bounces back quick and plays faster than I’ve seen some other young quarterbacks play.” That bounce-back ability will be critical if Darnold has a chance to be the team’s Week 1 starter. I’ve been told that the organization believes that he’ll seize the moment in training camp and preseason and win the Week 1 starting job. The brain trust doesn’t look at Darnold as a garden-variety rookie who will resemble a deer in the headlights when the preseason rolls around. Of course, the Jets aren’t naïve enough to believe that Darnold will morph into Aaron Rodgers in August, either. The kid’s going to make mistakes. If you’re expecting perfection in August, you’ll be disappointed. There were plenty of telling sequences in Darnold’s second practice. One time he stepped up in the pocket to elude pressure from Nathan Shepherd on his right side and completed a pass to the running back. There were moments when he dissected a blitz and relayed the hot-read intel at the line of scrimmage to teammates. Darnold extracted something good after virtually every time something went bad. He was hit as he turned to the back side and released the ball in the face of duress off the edge. The pass intended for Chad Hansen fluttered in the air before it was intercepted by Mo Claiborne. Moments later, an unfazed Darnold was pressured again, hung in the pocket, and fired a beautiful 20-yard completion to Hansen on a post route. “You want to limit your mistakes, but at the same time, if you do make a mistake, you don’t want to keep your head down,” said Darnold, who watched the first three practices on his iPad at a hotel about one minute away from the team facility during his four-day holdout. “You want to hold your head up high and just go after the next play with all you got. That’s our mentality here. But that’s also been my mentality throughput playing football. That’s how I was taught at a young age to play football. If I make a mistake early on, just bounce right back and get after it the next play.” Darnold’s rookie mistakes this month won’t necessarily preclude him from winning the starting gig. The Jets will evaluate him in a vacuum with this central question: Is the kid ready to be an NFL starter? t’d be ridiculous to think that a rookie with a few months of practice experience (and no regular-season game experience) would turn into a better quarterback than a 15-year veteran (Josh McCown) or a guy with playoff experience (Teddy Bridgewater) by September. “He learns from mistakes,” Todd Bowles said of Darnold. “He’s a hard worker. He’s mentally tough. So, he grasps the situation and he moves on to the next play pretty good.” Darnold has looked calm, cool and collected even after mistakes. He has “an air about him” and “naturalness,” as Maccagnan put it, that makes the people who matter most in the organization believe that he will indeed show enough over the next month to vault to the top of the depth chart. Darnold has miles to go before he sleeps, but eyewitnesses know that he’s a special young talent. “I feel really comfortable,” Darnold said. “At the same time, because I have really high expectations for myself, I got a ways to go in terms of growth. But I feel comfortable with the offense at a rudimentary level.” “The competitor in me, yeah, I want to start,” he added. “But at the same time, it’s about the team and whatever is best for the team. If Coach Bowles or Coach Bates feel like Josh or Teddy or myself best fit for the starting job, that’s what it is. And the team can respect it. So, that’s how we roll.” I’m not fitting Darnold for a gold jacket just yet, but his ability to quickly process information in the moment bodes well for his prospects to start sooner rather than later. Late in practice, he threw a deep pass intended for Hansen that fell harmlessly too short near the goal-line that included four critical elements. Within seconds, Darnold correctly identified a blitz, failed to recognize that the protection already had him covered, properly identified the right throw to make and smartly made a last-second adjustment that resulted in an incompletion. Here’s how he explained the play: “I signaled a fade because I saw man (coverage),” Darnold said. “This is a part of the growth that I’m talking about. I thought they were bringing pressure. It turns out we were protected. So, I could have gone through another read. But I just gave Chad a nice little fade. I was trying to throw back shoulder. Last second right as I was throwing it, I saw the DB’s eyes look at me. So, I knew if I threw back shoulder, it would have been a pick. So I tried to in literally the last millisecond… just try to throw it out in front of him. It came out weird. Threw it at his feet. But it’s better than a pick. Throwing an incompletion.” Although Darnold admitted that “it’s a huge challenge” to earn the Week 1 starting job, know this: The Jets brain trust believes that he will show them enough this month to be the Week 1 starter. Now, it’s up to the rookie to prove them right. The Jets have a smart young quarterback with a desire to learn more every day.
That was an excellent read. If Josh Rosen was truly the most ready NFL QB... Rosen must've been super ready, because Sam Darnold appears to really be ready; both physically and mentally. I'm pulling for Sam as day one opening day starter. Not just for Darnold himself, but for this very young team. They can learn how to lose alongside one another, in order to later know how to win together. If it's true that Sam has this special it factor that can't be described with words. Well then I want to see how fired up and excited this team comes out of the locker room on Monday Night Football while looking to fight for this rookie QB. I'm all for it. Sanchez needed MLB people to come in and teach him how to slide. Our coaching staff needed to implement Red Light/Green light signs for Sanchez. I'm not getting that impression from Darnold. Not at all. I think it'll be fun to see these young guns rallying around a young gun himself come opening night. Can rejuvenate the start of our 2018 season. Florida athletes (due to our humidity) are known to be the fastest around. So many fast Miami, FSU & Gator players have made the H.O.F with great speed. You can run in this type of heat with extreme humidity? You can run anywhere. I've never been out to the west coast. But I do know there's been something growing out there within those cool breeze Cali waters. Just something about these California born quarterbacks. All-Time some of the greatest ever. Hopefully Sam Darnold can follow the foot steps of Brady & Rodgers rather than Leinart and Sanchez.
More importantly, what Bowles had to say after paractice about the kid. On how did Sam Darnold look today... Second day for him, learning, progressing. He’ll watch the film, learn and get better. On does Darnold look like the situation is not too big for him... No, it's not to big for him, but you still got to learn. I don't think it’s too big for him at all, he got a lot of learning and work to do. He's just putting his head down and working and we'll go from there. On how Darnold responded to mistakes... He learns from his mistakes. He's a good study and he’s a hard worker and he mentally tough. He grasps the situation and he moves on to the next play pretty good. On how critical is that when you trying to evaluate... It's critical for anyone of our guys at any position. Whether it's a corner that gets beat, lineman gets beat for a sack or whether a linebacker fumbles to get back and run the next play to forget about it as well as the quarterback. So that's critical for everybody on our team.
That hack wrote an obvious fluff piece so he can then rip him apart once he makes an inseason mistake. Manish is obviously trolling the fanbase with this tripe.
Surprised the Manish hate hasn’t faded on here yet. He was spot on about Wilkerson and Revis way before the fans accepted it. He’s complimentary of the team when it’s deserved and critical when they screw up. I feel like people mostly hate him because he was super cynical at a time when the team was a complete mess. Fans don’t like negativity, but I’m starting to appreciate Manish’s objectivity and willingness to tell it like it is. I trust him a lot more than I used to.
I think Darnold is going to be a good quarterback someday but when someone is described with the vague, kiss of death, as "he has the it factor" or "can't explain it" that is always a red flag for me. It also seems like this whole thing is a set up to make him the day 1 starter, which is concerning as well. He should earn it.
Somewhat shocking. I'd expect Manish to at least wait a couple of weeks observing Sam to gush like that. He's writing this after two practices. I'm skeptical. How can he make all of those observations that fast? Bottom line: I'd take this more seriously if he has written it on September 1st rather than August 1st.
I think alot of people, myself included, soured on Manish when he had his head so far up rex ryan's butt that he wasn't being objective. Then rex went to buffalo and he started writing buffalo articles. his boyfriend is fired now so he's back to writing about the jets but obviously its going to take a little time before he's fully embraced after all that. it doesn't have anything to do with cynicism. I love cynicism
Except that's not even close to the point of the article and far from the only reason he's impressed. There is nothing vague about why hes impressed. It factor is far from why he's so impressed or the only reason The competition has been perfectly fair so far. They're all working with starters and backups. If he's given the opportunity to win the job and plays well enough to win the job it's on Darnold. Not because he was given a fair chance and didn't earn it. Fans cry when players are criticized too much and when they're complimented. Interesting fan base at times.
Have to remember that when Manish first started (when Mike Pettine was his "source), he was actually pretty decent. Then he completely sold out when he started manufacturing BS articles citing fake sources. Tim Tebow story? Bashing Sanchez and firing Rex Ryan rumors which weren't true at all. He's inconsistent because I do give him props on Mo and Revis (though I didn't want Revis back anyway). He's a beat writer and sometimes, his articles become too opinionated and that I find that to be a problem. Right now, I think he's doing OK because the Jets have a new darling in town that can do no wrong. That's subject to change.
The Jets are sort of like a sibling for us. It’s totally fine when we insult them, but if someone else does it it’s game on.
Vague? How about starting with how most rookie, most young QBs go into a shell after a int but Darnold came back immediately with a 25 yard strike How about the Jets think he proceeses info quickly? Or he’s already operating on an advanced plane for a rookie, making smart pre-snap reads and post-snap decisions, while displaying fluid mobility in and around the pocket? Still cashier or should I get past the first quarter of the article? Think you should reread.
Fuck Manish. I’m not letting him crawl back from the tabloid journalism he adopted. Nothing this cuck says has any bearing on my opinion of the state of things even if they appear to be in alignment with my own perceptions.
this writer has always been, to me, the type of person that will feed on whatever he is fed from whatever singular source inside in the org that he can get tp talk to him. for years he fed on Mike Pettine's opinion. you have to wonder who his new guy is, but it is nice to hear him be positive for a change. whomever was talking to him about Wilkerson was totally right tho. the dude was a total slouch. Manish has a new source who loves the heck out of Sam.
