This! ^ No more picks by wannabe GMs who think they're the smartest guy in the room with their "clever" picks! Identify the best guys you can get and go get them. Such a simple concept and yet how many Jets GMs couldn't grasp it? Joe Douglas may not be the smartest GM in the NFL, but compared to past GMs on this team he looks like Einstein.
This is the NFL. Too often the guy on the bench is next man up. The Jets have absolutely blown chunks over the last couple of decades when next man up became a thing. This is because the Jets have much too often gone for a "sure thing" at the expense of quality depth. Hell, the Jets can't even put quality across the field before injuries. Once the hurt train starts running it becomes a major sh*tshow.
We will trade back 8 times next draft and will accumulate a bunch of C rated players that can step right in!
More of an issue with the Jets history of drafting on day 3 than anything else, a lot of guys drafted on day 3 are supposed to be the next man up and provide some depth. Unfortunately the Jets are notorious for drafting poorly all around, not just the early rounds but the whole draft, adding up to a lack of legitimate starters and playmakers, and a lack of depth for any injuries that occur on top. There is a reason this team has been so bad for a decade now, and quantity doesn't always lead to good depth, we've seen it ourselves, stockpiling a bunch of picks doesn't guarantee results.
At the time of the move I liked the pick. If Douglas knew that Darrisaw would be there at #23, Jenkins at #34, and Davis at #86 I doubt he makes the move.
Why do you doubt that? Don’t you think he knew one of them would be available at 23 when he traded up? The internet falls in love with their own board sometimes.
When you trade up you are bidding against yourself. You are making the proposition that you cannot find talent on the assets traded up so you must get the guy you are trading up for. Most of the time this is a sign of a talent evaluation process that is not comfortable with itself. It looks like the trade up is expressing confidence in the the ability to call that particular player however it says more about them not being confident further down the line. Individual players fail so often at the NFL level that going 3-for-1 is actually riskier than trusting your process to find talent at your natural picks. As examples I give you Mark Sanchez and Sam Darnold. Both the product of trades up in the 1st round and both failed eventually and left the Jets in trouble.
Watson and Mahomes were traded up for. And this is without hindsight as the former now has legal issues to worry about.
The trades up work sometimes but when they fail they are devastating. Sometimes they are bad even when they work. The draft that produced Revis and Harris was one of the key drafts in the Jets collapse in 2011. The 2008 draft had another trade up (for Dustin Keller - who ultimately failed) and then the 2009 draft had the trade up for Sanchez. It is little wonder that the Jets were running on empty by 2012. They kept bidding against themselves, sometimes finding keystone players and sometimes drafting flops. When you spend a huge amount of draft capital over a series of years to pick cherries out of the pie most of the time you just wind up with a red thumb for your efforts. Even when a trade up produces a superstar the team trading up is often in trouble. Julio Jones was a great find for the Falcons but they still had trouble getting over the top and had a bunch of sorry seasons even with Jones and a FQB on hand.
What *evidence* do we have at this point that the Jets have a good talent evaluation process? Not conjecture. Evidence.
Would this apply to the Chiefs since they moved up to get Mahomes? What about the Ravens who traded up for Lamar? Ir is it just JD that won’t get the benefit of the doubt?
It’s such a nonsensical claim that it isn’t even worth giving credence to by debating. Because you want a specific player it means you can’t evaluate another player? when you trade up for a player it means you simply believe strongly in that player — that has zero to do with conceding you can’t evaluate other players. There is zero correlation between those two dynamics.
You're using the rare example that works out very well. These are generally trades by people who absolutely know what they are doing, already have a lot of talent on the team and have a great plan in place. Even then, when they fail they screw the hell out of the team that did them. I mean the Baltimore Ravens and Andy Reid are exceptions to a lot of rules. With the Jets the trades up have been worse than average and the effects long-lasting.
WOW! You've really gone all in on justifying your belief that the Jets should've traded back from the #2. Actually, you're NOT "bidding against yourself", nor are you holding a belief that you "cannot find talent on the assets traded up". In fact, what Douglas is doing is saying: "While I might find some talent with these later picks, they won't add up to being more valuable than the talent I just acquired". And that's a pretty safe bet when you look at the historical odds for finding talent based upon the rounds they're selected in. By FAR, the 1st round yields the highest success rate, and it falls off pretty quickly after the 2nd round. So trading two 3rd rounders for a pick in the top 15 makes a lot of sense, especially when you add in the 4th rounder he got in return which is a close value to a 3rd rounder - in essence, he gave up a 3rd and change to move up 9 spots to get as certain as prospect as there was in this draft. Short version: I'll take Douglas's methodology over yours. But that doesn't jibe with your conviction that Douglas screwed up so inventing new "rules" is how you can get around that.
