This is how I would stack the board if I was the Jets at this point. I'm putting everybody on the table and taking the BPA at 9 and then again at whatever other picks the Jets have in the top 15. 1. Eric Fisher - OT 2. Dion Jordan - OLB 3. Luke Joeckel - OT 4. Star Lotulelei - DT 5. Dee Milliner - CB 6. Lane Johnson - OT 7. Jarvis Jones - OLB 8. Sharrif Floyd - DT 9. Bjoern Werner - DE 10. Sheldon Richardson - DT 11. Tavon Austin - PM (playmaker) 12. Xavier Rhodes - CB 13. Geno Smith - QB 14. Chance Warmack - OG 15. Kenny Vaccaro - FS Notable omissions from Top 15: Ezekiel Ansah - 9 starts and 4.5 sacks in college is not good enough for a top 15 pick. Sorry. Potential is great but the bust factor is out of control here. Barkevious Mingo - just not strong enough to be a safe bet. Great athlete with insane measurables only he would not lift. That's not a top 15 pick. Particularly when getting pushed around on the edge was an issue at LSU at times. Cordarrelle Patterson - not enough to go on. One year of play and some fundamental errors in both returns and receiving make him not a safe top 15 pick. Tyler Eifert - plays TE and has had the usual Notre Dame bandwagon effect. Maybe a good late 1st pick but not in the top 15. Jonathan Cooper - Second best G in the draft and I'm not sure the first one should be in the top 15 but I just ran out of people to put above Warmack.
Interesting you have Fisher rated higher than Joeckel. Don't agree, but it's your list. I also like DeAndre Hopkins a hell of a lot more than Austin. There is a reason Clemson had a top five offense this year despite Sammy Watkins having a very off year for him and no TE worth mentioning.
Fisher is the better athlete. At LT you want a great athlete. He has to be quick, agile and strong. I just see Fisher as a bit more likely to be great in the NFL. Joeckel is an excellent prospect too. The reason Jordan is #2 on the list is that he is a great athlete who is also very productive. Great athletes have a better chance of becoming superstars than good athletes. Great Athletes who are 6'6" or 300 lbs are really hard to find. There are only so many of those guys wandering around. I wouldn't have Austin ranked quite as high just as a WR. It's his ability to move around in the offense and give you options plus his return ability that pulls him up a good 7 or 8 slots above the next guy listed as a WR.
Do you not value athleticism in a guard, like you do in a tackle? I know that I'm biased to Cooper, but he's a better athlete than Warmack. I think they'll both be great offensive linemen, but I think I would take Cooper over Warmack.
King Ugly is suppose to be a great athlete and strong and all that too, we'll see what happens to him this year.
I don't like either of them as a top player in this draft. I literally ran out of people I could justify taking over Warmack in the top 15. Too many questions elsewhere in the players you would normally see as top 15 guys based on their senior seasons. I almost put Robert Woods at 15 and I've had him between 20-25 all spring. There are just so many question marks attached to guys in this draft. That's what moves Warmack up from about 19 to 14 on my list. And to answer the Cooper question, I think his value is in the low to mid 20's. Great guard but he's a guard.
I'll tell you I couldn't agree more about Star Lotulelei being #4, this guy jumps off the screen when you watch him play. He's like Haloti Ngata version 2.0
BR4 Could not agree with you more. At this point any of these players provide a great upgrade for the Jets. The only one I'm soft on is Geno Smith but I see why you have him up there. Insightful as always. Cant wait
Jarvis is to high I think he will not be on the top 10. I would defenitely have Warmack or Cooper in the top 10. I will not have Werner or Richardon in the top 10 either.
The guards are excellent prospects but they're guards. A defensive end prospect is much more valuable than a guard everything else being equal. I know it sounds wrong, but it isn't. The reason guards never show up in the top 10 and defensive ends often do is that what they bring to the table and how they perform their craft just aren't equal in terms of impact on the field. There is no guard in history who was two-thirds of the player that Bruce Smith or Reggie White was. That's not because there haven't been great guards, because there have been many of them. It's because over the course of a guard's career there is no contribution than he can make that equals 200 sacks or 50 forced fumbles or 200 tackles for a loss. What guards do doesn't have the same impact as what a great defensive lineman, particularly a defensive end, does.
This are some of the best Guards that ever played the game. Joe DeLamielleure, Mike Munchak, Gene Upshaw, Larry Little, Steve Hutchinson, Larry Allen just to name a few. Cooper, Warmack are legit. Star and Floyd are probably the only sure fire things in this draft as far as defensive of lineman. The rest have question marks.
With the exception of Hutchinson and Allen all those guys played in a different era in which running between the tackles was a strategy used more often by successful teams. Even then, the team that DeLamielleure played on made the playoffs just three times (once at 4-5) in a thirteen year career. He played on one team in his career that had double digit wins. Mike Munchak had more success, but he only played on one team that you might have called great in his career and he never made a Super Bowl. Larry Allen was a 2nd round pick. Larry Little was a UDFA. Steve Hutchinson was a 17 pick who played on some pretty good teams but only one great one. Gene Upshaw was a 17 pick who was the only guy in that list of great guards to win a Super Bowl and he played on one of the best teams of all time in the pre-salary cap era. Al Davis really knew how to assemble talent in his prime. He always had rosters overloaded with good to great players, which is why the Raiders were one of the most successful teams over the first three decades of the merged NFL and one of the best in the AFL before that. Edit: gotta modify a little bit. I of course had Larry Little mentally on the Denver Broncos in the 70's and early 80's. My silliness. Little won two Super Bowls on the Dolphins. Having an All-Pro Guard who is a UDFA leaves a lot of room for drafted All-Pros.
