Okay, we've now seen what Zach can do in a live game. There will be 16 more (hopefully!) to judge him on, but for me, it can be boiled down to this question: would you still rather have Sam, given the pretty good showing he had, or Zach? For me, I take Zach without a second thought. Put him on Carolina with CMC and they win 30+ - 14. Of course Zach made some mistakes, but every rookie does - I'd say LaFleur made more, as did his OL and receivers. Anyway, what do you think?
I'll take Zach for sure. The Kid needs support as he can't do it alone. The OL absolutely sucked while Fatboi was in there, but seemed to stabilize when Fant moved to the left side.
Zach for sure. Just because Sam's team won today doesn't mean the score would be reversed if we kept him. If we had kept Sam and lost today, we'd all be kicking ourselves for passing on Zach.
I don't think Sam showed anything today that would say to any Jets fan damn we made a mistake not sticking with him.
If we had a player like McCaffery we would have won that game comfortably even with the O-line playing terribly (as usual)
And do we have Sewell plus another high pick? Honestly Sam was damaged goods and needed to get out of NY. I am very happy we have Zach, but if the Jets do not fix the protection and have no running game the results will not be much different than the last 3 years. Sam will never be an elite QB, but I still firmly believe he will be good enough to win with. He will have a decent year with CMac, Moore and Robby.
My stance form the beginning hasn’t changed. All things equal you keep Sam, but once you involve the salary cap it’s an easy decision to trade him and go with the pick
I liked the Darnold trade a lot. But at this point it looks like retaining Darnold and planting Wilson on the bench would've been a win-win situation. Sam is used to taking a beating and could've endured one more. If he plays well, we walked into a good situation with a quarterback that improved his own value past what we could have gotten. I still have no problem with dealing him though. Sam was done here and will not be a FQB. There's no scenario where you don't draft a QB at second overall given the strength of this class and the prospects.
You can tell Zach is natural playmaker, while Sam is still making the same bonehead plays he made in high school. The one play where Zach was being chased on the sideline and threw the ball away showed excellent maturity. Sam would have thrown a pick on that play. With a halfway decent QB, Carolina wins by three scores today.
Zach no question. The accuracy and decision making was relieving to watch. Darnold had a good game, it's not his first.. but he only connected on 2-3 balls down field, the rest were dump offs. He looked like a pro bowler one half and a scrub the other. The awful turnover. It was just a classic Darnold game. There were 2 plays we'd never see Darnold do. One was a pass to Griffin (I believe that's who it was) inside when it was clear the pass was intended to go to the receiver doing an out route. He saw all the coverage running to the out route, saw Griffin sitting inside and made a great throw on an adjustment. He threw it perfect as a LB was sitting in the middle of the field also and had to pass it over him. That was one of my favorite throws of the game. The other was getting absolutely creamed and coming back the 2nd play after and delivering a strike to Davis. His arm strength made that look easier than Darnold ever could. Darnold probably could have gotten it there but it would have been bang bang, and his lack of accuracy makes it a crap shoot.
Pretty similar tbh. As bad as our OL was Zach still had it better today than Sam under Gase, but Sam had it better today than Zach.
