One more thing I will mention on this: Joe Douglas acquired draft picks the last couple years to put himself in the position to do exactly what he has done. He wanted AVT, he had the ammunition to go up and get him. He wanted Jermaine Johnson, he was able to move up for him. He wanted Breece Hall. He moved up 2 spots to make it happen. I think if you walk into the draft with your traditional 7 picks, 1 each round, it may be a mistake to sacrifice picks to move up for a specific guy. That was not the case the last couple of drafts for Joe Douglas. He set himself up to move around the board and that is exactly what he did, while adding great talent to the Jets roster. That includes Hall, who looks like he could be a big star in this offense.
It’s important to remember though that these were not freebies. Douglas spent assets of the Jets to acquire those picks. Whether or not he made the best trades and I think he was really close to best scenario in the Adams and Darnold trades he did subtract from the teams player assets to get those extra picks. It was likely a wiser move not to cherry pick after making the needed moves away from the last regime’s plan.
Yeah, true. They did have to sacrifice roster quality in 2020 and 2021, but it was part of the plan. I guess the true answer will be seen on the field. If these guys produce, no one will complain about mid-round picks being lost. If the Jets continue to struggle, Douglas' decisions will be scrutinized even more. What was the trade in 2018 to move up to #3? I think it was three 2nd round picks, plus #6 overall, right? That was when the Jets had no idea who was even going #1 or #2. They ended up with Darnold. He flopped. Maccagnan was fired. Obviously it was a terrible trade, but I was fine with it at the time, thinking the Jets finally had a franchise QB. Most franchises would give up anything for that. So no surprise I am also fine with these much more minor assets being traded away for potential star players like AVT, Johnson, and Hall. I think in total Douglas traded away three 3rd round picks and two 5th round picks for those 3 players specifically. Sounds steep, but not if all turn out to be homeruns, and I think that is highly possible. I guess we would have to figure out who was on the board when the Jets actually were going to pick those 3 times, plus who would be available with the 5 picks they traded away. It is complicated but I do get the fans who prefer keeping their picks too.
In my old fashioned view, early in a rebuild its never a good idea to sacrifice picks for players. However, this year was not technically early in the rebuild and the value we got from the JJ trade is hard to beat. In fact, it was basically a must after passing over edges in the top 10. The Hall trade is also a decent value for the potential return. The AVT trade was an overpay but after taking Wilson we were backed into a corner.
The thing about 2018 is that I was not high at all on Darnold. I hated Josh Allen. Up until the last few weeks before the draft I thought Josh Rosen was probably the best QB in the draft followed by Baker Mayfield and Lamar Jackson. Then Rosen got all humble about "when they decide I suck I will do something else" and I thought the guy has given up before he started. The point is that at the 6 pick the Jets options were just as good as at the 3 and we gave up 3 good 2nd round picks to cherry pick at 3 instead of just waiting for who was there at 6 instead. Nobody is smart enough to know for sure who is going to work out at the NFL level. Even if you are pretty smart an RGIII is always one play away from a career-limiting injury. Even if everybody is sure an Andrew Luck is just a bad injury away from hanging his pads up for good. In that constant harsh reality of how the NFL works trading up to cherry pick is not about how smart you are about talent, it is about how foolish you are about the conditions that all talent in the NFL must endure to be great.
Three second round picks was an extraordinay over payment in historical terms. And of course in hindsight, we made the wrong pick. But there is a case to be made that if we made the right pick...say allen or jackson...then it was a worthwhile trade. You got a franchise QB for the next 10 years. Assuming injuries don't kill them. If you kept number 6 maybe you picked rosen cause allen ,darnold and Jackson picked before you. No way of knowing. where would we be today with rosen and the 3 second rounders? Who might they have been? we did get a second rounder back fir darnold. rosen would have gotten us nothing. The darnold second rounder git us johnson. He could be great or he could bust. My point is its impossible to tell the future. So looking back fir coulda.shoulda.woulda is very misleading.
Regarding the bold - yeah but that's kind of the point of the "trading up is usually bad" mindset. It will generally not play out in favor of the team that trades up. Sometimes it will, but usually not, so it's basically never a good idea to do something that will hurt you more times than not. All of this is based on mountains of evidence that almost no GM can consistently scout talent better than any other GM. They're all watching the same film and have access to the same statistics. There is an actual Harvard study on this that concluded drafting is like 98% luck. Now, that doesn't mean you should just accumulate 20 7th round picks every year. NFL GM's, in aggregate, are generally able to correctly identify which groups of players at a given position should go in which rounds. What they are not able to consistently do is correctly pick which individuals within those groups are likely to be better than the other individuals in that same group.
Oh i agree with you, depending on what you give up. I place very little value on fifth round picks. I would trade them all day long to move up. I truly believe talent is concentrated in the early rounds. Every round brings surprises but for the most part the higher the round the less likely you get a star. But i also believe talent is widely and maybe even randomly distributed within a round. You will get an excellent player at 4 and an excellent player at 24. Where people go crazy is comparing picks at the same position. The jets picked the 4th edge at 26. I dont care if TW is better than JJ. They never face each other. I only care if JJ is great for the jets. And the draft is a giant chess match but you are playing against 31 other players. Every move affects every other move. So if you have a chance to trade a high round pick to get your guy, do it. I would do it every time.
Yah that last point makes sense…In general the GMs as a whole do a good job of assessing talent by round. That is reflected in the player distributions … for the most part, round 1 players are as a group better than round 3 players and those guys are as a group better than round 7 players. But agree that is an overall average and within that individuals matter. So some round 3 players may be great (curious how Dean will do this year) and some round 1 players will bust. then of course the team matters A LOT. A player drafted by Baltimore for example has a much better chance at success than a player drafted by say Cleveland or the Jets or Jacksonville….better coaches better systems etc. Darnold had flags at USC with turnovers but had he been drafted by a better team who’s to know how he’d have developed….certainly Mac did him no favors by drafting more defense…. had Darnold performed like Allen then the three second round picks would not have been a bad price to pay….at the time I had no issue with it…I was happy we didn’t give up any first rounders. But the player did not work out so it sucker.
I wanted Ford later but Hall is the best RB in the class. He reminds me of Curtis Martin a bit. I think going for the home run was the right play.
This team was loaded with average to below average talent. The main thing we needed and still do to a point, was/is an infusion of young talent. Breece is young talent. Anyone who doesn't see this is not paying attention. I don't care about giving up a 4th or whatever we did to move up to draft him. Put it this way, would you rather Buffalo had gotten him like they wanted? I know its May and we are all bored, but criticizing this and all of our picks this year is ridiculous, at least until they hit the field anyway. You want to throw criticizm at JD, do it for the 2020 draft disaster, not for this years. To be 100% honest, i am still pissed as f*k at him for the James Morgan pick LOL.
agree …arguing over “value” of giving up a 5th round pick makes zero sense to me…had we given up a third rounder or a future second rounder then we’d have something to talk about but in general, players win on the field, not “value” for a fifth rounder….I get the argument of the draft is a crap shoot so you want as many picks as possible, but it doesn’t work that way. Really what you want is as many early round picks as possible…not all rounds are equal…so for example having 2 second round picks is generally going to yield better players than having 6 5th rounders…extreme example I know, but just trading back to have more late round picks, or to be able to say we drafted at the right value, is not always the best move. yes, value matters…you can’t waste a 2nd round pick on a 6th round graded player, but at some point that precision ends…like arguing if Wilson was worth the 10th overall pick….wells shit the issue is you wouldn’t have gotten him with the 37th or whatever pick we had at the time, and sure there may be one of those second round receivers who performs at a comparable level but the odds are lower and lower as you go. so I have zero issue with moving up three spots to jump Houston and get the top RB at the cost of a fifth rounder. How anyone can argue that is just beyond me
This draft wasn't as strong as ones in the past--this was the consensus among all media people and NFL execs. You had punters going way earlier than they usually do. I believe the Jets strategy was to really target specific players they liked, even more than they usually do. I think they had "their guys" and they were aggressive to go get them because they didn't believe the depth was there to wait on their 2nd or 3rd choice. As long as this isn't the common theme, I love it.
But as has been pointed out, you can't say it was an overpay until a couple of seasons pass. Would it have been an overpay if say, the Jets traded a pick to move up to get D'Brickashaw or Mangold that year? Hell no. Both were bedrock players. Early returns on AVT is he is also in that category. Count me as being "in" on JD's draft strategy. Get the guy! I'm excited to see Breece in green, as much as I am to see Garrett Wilson or Sauce. Well, maybe not as much as Sauce.
Can't believe you're beating up on Douglas for taking the best running back in the draft. Can we get through preseason first?
