I wonder how much pull woody has in these decisions. It amazes me how we always somehow make the wrong pick when given 2 choices. Bowles over McDermott, Gase over anyone else, Saleh over Daboll. Granted the last 2 were Chris, but I imagine woody had to have some input even through back channels. Obviously he’s the owner so he has unlimited pull, but I do wonder how mud he meddles and if that impacts these hires.
I say this knowing full well Daboll can easily crash and burn next year. We’ve seen it plenty of times with our first time hires.
I've been thinking about my grade for him and have reconsidered. He has brought some very nice pieces, yes. Has been good at extracting value from trading players. BUT when he was hired, our worst positions were QB & OL. He's invested 3 first round picks in both of those positions, 1 has missed almost 2 full seasons due to injury, 1 is a stud but missed more than a half of a season for injury, and the other is now an inactive QB3 who has looked like he doesn't belong. Drafted a corner who looked adequate filling in the secondary. Cut him after first year and he's now a starting safety for the Giants in the playoffs. Our safeties are no good to boot. Keeping his own draft picks on the roster long past their sell by date: Mims, Becton, Mann etc Grade: F
Its not a question of the quality of the picks. They are both quality players, which is way better than busting. But last year was one of the best lineman draft in a decade for both sides of the ball. And our picks forced later trade ups. The logic is pretty simple. We needed stud linemen on both sides, and had one of the best linemen drafts in 10 years to pick from, and instead we went skill positions. That is not rebuilding correctly. Its way harder to land a quality lineman than a quality WR or CB. Like I said, Sauce is great, but he covers one WR. A stud edge can disrupt an entire offense, and are much harder to find. Same with stud o-linemen vs WRs. The drop off in talent outside of the top 15 for the big guys was large. The dropoff in talent for CB and WR was considerably smaller. It could be that I'm old school and believe champions are built out from the front. Some people have a different take. IMO if we'd had the Giants first round we'd have been a better team going forward. The whole reason we started the trade ups was because we needed an edge, but took skill players in the top 10, forcing us to trade up for JJ. After losing pick 35 in that trade up we had to trade up again to take Hall. The skill position picks in the top 10 started the whole thing. If we just would have done it logically, we wouldn't have needed to trade our other picks for an edge and Hall, and could have gotten a lot more out of the draft. Sauce and Wilson are quality picks, but we'd have been a better roster if we'd gone with big bodies in the top 10.
Pinnock definitely has a higher upside then Joyner, but he performed similarly. He wasn't great for the Giants. JD did find Adams, who played quite well in limited data set. Let's see this Sunday, he may turn out to be better than both of them.
Again, read what I said. Notice the word "collective" in collective decision. Also, notice I said he's the Kahuna, so it ultimately falls on him. As far as what you're saying, hypothetically, if Saleh & MLF were all in on Zach, & JD wanted Mac Jones, do you actually think JD would force Zach on them? My problem with JD is that he's been too 'hands-off,' with regard to the construction of Saleh's CS, & Saleh in-general. Much the same as my problem with Saleh being hands-off with the offense. As for Zach, while I didn't want him, & have been critical of his play from the start, his play can't be judged in a vacuum. Coaching & mentoring is soooo important, for any young QB, especially for a raw 21-yr-old. I have no idea if Zach will ever see the light, but seeing his regression, both on the field, & in his self-confidence, is a huge red-flag on the 'development' team. Because of that, I can't call him a 'bust' (yet), & he's still as young as some that'll be drafted in April. So, being a Jets fan, & because he's grown to handle himself like an adult, since his demotion, I'm pulling for the kid. Now it's up to JD & Saleh to bring in an experienced mentor, QB whisperer, to teach Zach to be an NFL QB. .
It’s never a luxury pick when you get potential cornerstone All Pro’s on either side of the ball. Sauce has probably been the best corner in football this year and as we’ve seen with the Bengals example, top receivers can help a QB just as much as top lineman.
I get you. Its never a bad thing to get great players, and with our history drafting... I just don't think it was proper team building.
Conspiracy theories, or who produced or edited the video, means nothing to me. I heard what JD, Saleh, MLF, scouts, etc said before, during, & after the draft... and it was actually them, not some CGI or editing trick. My point has nothing to do with justifying anything, other than saying that all the honchos in the organization were on the same page with Zach. It was a collective decision, on the whole organization, from the top down. Nothing about whether it was a good or bad choice. .
You’re trying to do this all with hindsight though. Would it have been better to get Zion Johnson who has gotten beaten like a drum in pass protection all year or Kenyon Green who is tied for second in the league in penalties? Or Trevor Penning who can’t get on the field for the Saints. Those were the guys available over Wilson. You wanna argue we should’ve taken Cross or Ekwonu, meh. That’s only because they’ve been good.
I stated a building philosophy. Your post is using hindsight. Also, the guys you listed are all promising linemen going into year 2, and I'd gladly have any one of them on our roster.
And what I'm saying is that is the scenario created by the producers of the "Flight 2021" because that is the story the organization wanted presented to the public. It is not at all dissimilar to a report by Rich Cimini for ESPN in May of 2021 (Zach Wilson's path to the New York Jets - Inside the NFL's worst-kept secret (espn.com). What I'm much more interested in is if there was anyone inside the organization who said -"wait - there's problems with this guy" who was fearful of bucking the trend. Today the decision to draft Wilson is much more open to debate. Were Douglas and Saleh looking for all input or only that of the sycophants going down the same path they were blazing. Without a culture of open discussion the team is doomed to repeat such errors. On a side note, without seeing a lot of detail, it appears that just today LaFleur admitted that putting Wilson on the field so quickly to start in game one a year ago was a mistake. How will the team protect itself from compounding these mistakes in the future?
Hopefully, they'll bring in an adult to teach the kids (the whole CS included). As for the other stuff, I know what you're saying. But not everyone watches those videos & sees/hears what you see/hear. I may be tuned in to different things than you are. I don't care about the message the PR dept is trying to send. I'm blind & deaf to it. All I wanted was to hear what the people in the room were thinking before the draft. People were saying how fast Zach processes/reads the field, before they drafted him. Obviously, it hasn't been lookin' that way in actual games. It makes them look like fools... or, that their plan, rather than developing Zach, has done the opposite. They've destroyed his confidence. I understand you'd like to see if any people pushed back against Zach. But all the people with any honcho standing in the organization, were in on Zach before the draft, so to me, it doesn't matter. They heard any objections, & did what they did. .
I'm one of the guys whose main objection to Wilson was always his inability to read and process and I'm a guy on my couch - where were the pros? But would you care if, for instance, Douglas was on Wilson all the way and Saleh wanted Fields, or the other way around? If those two battled for weeks it would not have shown up in the puff piece called Flight 2021 but may have in the ESPN report if the word was out. The team wants us all to believe everyone was in perfect harmony and agreement all along - I want to know if they actually were. I'd also like to know if Wilson ever had any confidence to destroy rather than just blame his current lack on Saleh and LaFleur. Kirwan and Miller today on SXM radio had an interesting take on Saleh's comment about sending Wilson to sit on the beach and read a book. One of them suggested that it wasn't really for ZW to relax and start over but to do some deep thinking about whether he wanted to actually be in the NFL and put in the necessary work to succeed.
There's an entire industry out there that primp, polish & package these young athletes. The Jets fell for the hype... that's not a surprise... many teams do. What is disappointing is the inept way they've handled the situation.
Nice post. You and several others have written about getting Zach more help from the QB coach, OC, etc. to "teach him to be an NFL QB." That is a laudable goal, and should be attempted, if we keep him. My take is, I don't think Zach has the mindset/height/talent to EVER be much in the NFL. Nothing personal against Zach, but he was WAY overdrafted by Douglas! I'm probably older than you, but it is amazing to me how much Zach reminds me of Browning Nagle, jets QB all of 1992 They used to rave about how great an arm Nagle had--Joe Theisemen called it a "bazooka." Like Zach Wilson, that was ALL he had. They were the same height and both looked short out there. Both Nagel and Wilson fired the slant pass about 100 mph and then wonder why the WR couldn't catch it. Neither of them could/can read a defense and they MISFIRE early and often. The jets went through the entire 1992 season starting Nagle every game and ended up 4-12 with Nagle throwing 7 TDs and 17 INTs. Like Saleh, the entire year of 1992 coach Bruce Coslet kept talking about Nagel's strong arm, his potential, etc. The jets (correctly) gave up on Nagel after that one full struggling year, and he never again saw much of the light of day again in the NFL. My opinion, and it's only my opinion, is that you could have the greatest QB coach and greatest OC ever, and Zach still would be running scared out there, airmailing simple, short passes a yard over and ahead of the receivers, and into the hands of a DB. . You have to have something ability, other a strong, wild, erratic arm, to DEVELOP. You can't make a nuclear bomb without some plutonium to start with.
We're never gonna know, so I have to go with what I saw/heard. Anything else is pure speculation. Everyone was glowing about Zach, before the draft, & when they drafted him. As for Zach's confidence, I'd be more inclined to say he was over-confident, if anything. The difference in his demeanor on pro-day vs his last presser is glaring. He's been beaten down. Of course part of his beat-down is on him for his play, but it's obvious, at least to me, that after Knapp died the Jets did nothing to help him develop. It was the blind leading the blind. And that's on every level of the organization, for allowing it to happen. That he stood there after the Jags game & took the heat, & answered all questions thoughtfully, showed a level of maturity I didn't think he had. So, still only 23, if the team brings in an established QB guy to work with him, maybe he can be fixed? Who knows... & I'll leave it to the omnipotent Who, that seems to know everything .
For this season I give Douglas a B+. He did enough to markedly improve this team in one offseason and has a nice young core in place to build around. HAVE TO Address QB and OL in the offseason especially, get a speedy tackling machine LB, have another offseason like last year and they should be right back in contention next season.
I was at the '68 AFL championship game... so that tells ya where my chronological age is (otherwise I'm still 18). I've actually seen Zach throw with touch on several occasions, last time his 2nd TD to Uz, a few weeks ago. I didn't want the Jets to draft him, because I thought he was a spoiled rich kid, & questioned if he could be accurate consistently. I've always thought it's what's between the ears, that makes a good QB, & wasn't sold he had that. As for athleticism, that I think he has. And that was what got him to the NFL. Another question I had was... great athletes often fall back on their athleticism, when under duress. He would have to learn to use his head, & temper that athleticism in critical situations. Could he? He really was a raw project, & needed a smart coach to find ways to reach/teach him. After Knapp, other than Beck for a short time, there was nobody with a clue to help him, & he was left to flounder. That said, if he has NFL QB in him, his total beat-down since the Bills game, may be what he needed. So, since he'll most likely be with the team next season, the Team needs to heed Zach's SOS, & bring in a 'snake-charmer' to work with him. .
