He wouldn't have had to yet he tried to compensate by using all three of those picks to fill Warford's shoes. It was a lose lose decision that only gets worse the deeper you think about it and defending the thought process is just a losing argument. Every situation is different and if a move is made this year it could backfire but Idzik really shit the bed on that one and there's no two ways about it.
The problem with trying to identify who will be better in the long run and then trading up for them is that it just doesn't matter in the end even if you are right. The NFL is an extraordinary battle of attrition in which nobody is immune to the breaks of the game. The guys who have 10+ year careers have those careers because they got lucky and didn't take the one or two hits they couldn't see coming. In that light trading up for anybody is a fool's errand. Your best chance to actually still have a good player on the field in 5+ years is to exercise every pick you possibly can instead of bundling them to guess who will or will not have their knee torn up or the bell rung once too often. People point at Darrelle Revis as the kind of move that makes or breaks teams and they're wrong about that. The Darrelle Revis move is the kind of move that makes AND breaks teams. There's a small chance that Revis gets hurt right out of the gate and a small chance that he makes it to a long career without ever getting hurt. Probably 75% of the results are going to be right in the middle, which is where Revis wound up. From the moment the Jets made the Revis trade up things started to go wrong. 1. Revis held out in training camp in a divisive hold out that set the course of things to come for him and the Jets. By putting their eggs in one basket in the draft the Jets seriously reduced their leverage in terms of negotiating a contract with him. What were they going to do? Not pay him and watch him go back into the draft the next year? 2. The 2007 Jets sucked because when you trade up for a CB you're not only getting a low impact player because they're a rookie you're also getting a low impact player because of the position they play. That team didn't have enough talent to do well. 3. Revis held out in 2010 again. Again what were the Jets going to do, not pay him? With all that value tied up in him the leverage was on his side, again, and so the Jets negotiated their second unfortunate deal with him. 4. In 2012 the nightmare scenario that almost all NFL players face happened. Revis got a knee injury and the season was wiped out for him. For the Jets the loss was fairly catastrophic, because again, they had much more value tied up in Revis than they should have. Not only cap-wise but also in terms of the extra draft picks they used to acquire him. 5. The Jets finally got out from under the problems that their 2007 trade up had caused by improbably finding a real suitor to trade for him despite his injury and the contract demands he was likely to make. That was a very fortunate ending for them. It could have been much worse. If you're going to trade up for a player not only does he have to be good but you and he both have to be very lucky as well. In Revis case he wasn't all that lucky but he landed on his feet anyway at the end. For the Jets there's a real chance they did as well with the Richardson pick but it's been a creepy hair-raising ride the whole way for them and they're not out of the woods yet.
so idzick shit the bed for not making a move that may or may not have been available for a premium price and the next 3 picks were all made chasing that non move? its gonna be a long offseason if we are going to debate and criticize moves that were never made based on the benefit of hindsight
Since you added that on, it's pretty obvious that since this is your Jordan Matthews crush thread and I described a perfectly plausible way to get him, your notion of reach and a halfing for him at 18 is about 10 times crazier than figuring out how to draft him where he is supposed to go. If you care at all about maximizing value at least.
This argument becomes moot as soon as Warford gets hurt, which the odds say he will some time in the next few seasons. We also don't know what Aboushi and Campbell will produce yet. The odds are probably greater that the Jets will have a solid guard on the field in 2016 between Winters, Aboushi and Campbell than the Titans will with just Warford. That's the trade off the Jets would have made if they bundled 5th and 6th round picks to trade up for Warford. And we haven't even gotten into the realm of having two solid guards in 2016, which seems unlikely for the Jets but impossible if they had taken Warford for 3 picks.
Meanwhile in the 3 years before 2016 it's no contest and so far the thought of Warford on injured reserve is worth about as much as our three guys all playing. It's unlikely any of them are ever more than serviceable which is basically worthless you can bring in any bum through FA for 2-3x minimum salary and get that (read: Colon.). This isn't even a question unless Warford gets a career ending injury which is maybe what 5% at most, because knocking him out for a season or three isn't even going to come close. And if 2 of those three guys are starting in 2016 we might as well just shoot the team in the head now and get it over. And again, it would've cost LESS than the 5th and 6th 100% of the time, so it actually took up more resources to even compare this fiasco. The Revis post is a lot more entertaining but I'll have to address that later.
My comment was very real, you act like you knew what Idzik was thinking in Rd 3. I never said Matthews is worth the 18th pic NOW (JAN14). His stock is rising and in 3 months his value could be a mid -round Rd 1 selection. The arguement is not about Jordan Matthews and we all have been hijacking this thread, it was your POV on trading for Warford and knowing what you think Idzik was thinking last April.
Trading up is like buying in a seller's market. Look at the Jets right now. Look at what all the trading up has gotten them over the last decade plus. Two AFC Championship Games on the road against teams that had the goods doesn't equal a great result from the strategy when those games are matched up against two 4-12 disasters and all the middling teams the Jets have fielded in other years. Imagine what the Jets could have done if they just exercised their picks and then Woody Johnson made a major splurge in free agency to enhance a good roster instead of shore up a weak one?
Tannenbaum had no patience.He would always try to force his hand around every turn. Truthfully he had no interest in building a sustained winner...he wanted a big push for a 1 or 2 year run...which he got.
In general I agree that trading up the 1st pick is not a good idea. It's a losing battle largely for the contract reasons you describe, though I think you overrate the potential future injury aspect. The thing is that injuries can happen to anybody, but nobody has much of an idea of when or how severe they will be when it goes down. With modern medicine there are a whole range of extremely severe injuries that are definitely going to end a guy's season but then they can come back as good as new or close to it the following year. Losing a Revis for a year sucks for that year, but it's a blip on the radar in terms of his contribution to the Jets for his career. In that specific case Cromartie stepped up and played lights out besides, so there wasn't even a huge dropoff in CB production that season. The main thing is that Revis was a big factor in bringing the team into relevance, the classic case of giving up a fair but not absurd amount of equity to obtain a quality asset. In turn the team received exactly what they were hoping for, obviously Revis was better than anybody expected but when you make that move you're hoping on some level he could be that good I think. It turns out with the way the guy was wired you were going to run into financial headaches to level out his unmatched talent. If that wasn't the case he would still be here tearing it up for the next few years. As it was he provided several years of insane play that provided a real shot at the Super Bowl back to back years and Sheldon Richardson who looks like he might be Revis' best gift of all so far. You can argue how bad it could have turned out all you want but the fact is Revis was maybe the greatest to ever play his position for years on our team, then he got traded for an amazing rookie at a higher impact position just after his peak prime. If Richardson stays healthy that means Revis will have made a hugely positive impact on the team for 15-20 years, with one giant season that he sat out on IR and CB play didn't fall off very much. Really broke the team that guy. I have a pretty good idea of what Idzik was thinking in light of his subsequent actions in that draft. You can pretend that he didn't pick 3 straight middling to weak guard prospects that are turning out exactly that way as if it's an unrelated action, and that would be a bunch of nonsense. He either tried to trade up for Warford but not hard enough or he didn't even try. In either case he wound up devoting more resources than it would've taken to get a deal done to the same exact position with 3 straight picks, and not one of them has any chance of turning into the same type of player Warford is/will become. You can pray for Warford to get a career ending injury if you want to have a leg to stand on, but you better hope it happens within the next 2 years if so. Probably 3 years of Warford playing will provide a bigger impact than all 3 of those guys over their combined careers, (2 of which will likely last about that long for not being good enough to stay on the roster.) Assuming the overwhelmingly likely event that Warford plays more than 4 or 5 years in his career, the comparison is going to be a bloodbath and i find it pretty entertaining how many of you want to pretend otherwise. Why? Because trading up even in the third round is the devil, of course! Why do 20 picks get traded up in every draft then? Because 20 times a year the GM that trades a pick up is an idiot, and the one that trades down in the deal is a genius, of course! Don't bother looking at the results, just take my word for it no matter what! You think Matthews is going to have an 18th pick grade by April? Fine. Absurd thought, but fine. All of the tape is in and the strength of his game is being polished and smooth and has nothing to do with being freaky athletic in any way. No chance he goes to the combine and all of a sudden his draft value doubles overnight, which is exactly what you're saying is going to happen. As if everybody is going to forget that there are 3 WR prospects that are significantly better from the present vantage point. Or 2 TEs that are more gifted. Then in this alternate reality where he does have a grade around 18 by April, the Jets are going to draft him why again? There will probably be at least 4 QBs taken by then and if all of the better WRs and TEs are off the board which is impossible we're not going to just pass up whatever top 5 talent slid. It's a thread about Jordan Matthews, which is the ultimate waste of time if you're not willing to consider trading up to get him, it will not happen otherwise. I bring up Warford to illustrate the other side of the trading up coin especially after the 1st round, but that's hijacking because nobody can even acknowledge that it was a mistake. Have to use the obligatory hindsight cop out, despite many people wanting Warford before the draft, like it's a total shock he worked out perfectly and nobody could've seen it coming. Good stuff. Perfect example of giving up way too much to trade up too early in the draft. Couldn't agree more. Has absolutely nothing to do with trading up later in the second or third round, but it definitely shows why most people have no ability to differentiate between vastly different scenarios just because they all fall under the headline 'trading up.'
I thought you can't make a major splurge in free agency either because then you're bringing in mercenaries to destroy all future negotiations for the franchise though? Unfortunately the truth is that it's a cap system and there is no one perennially winning strategy, beyond getting lucky to draft the best QB in the league of course. You have to mix strategies with regards to FA and the draft, or your team gets progressively unbalanced and you fail. Even if you do everything right the dynamics change a lot in short periods and it takes a lot of luck or dynamic decision making to extend a winning window or open a new one within a couple years. True post. Tannenbaum overdid the trading up and gave up too much, and missed on the picks too much, but he still built a window that legitimately could've won the Super Bowl. Fell short, and things needed to change as a result, but that doesn't mean trading up is always a bad idea. It's probably always a bad idea to do it that much, but it has to be in the arsenal of moves like everything else, or a GM is not going to be an effective enough manager in the long run.
Can only help Matthews' draft stock!! SENIOR BOWL weigh-in. Today 1/20/14 Jordan Matthews 6' 2"5/8 209lbs 10 1/2" hands 80 1/8 wing span. Largest hands of WRs in Senior Bowl and largest wingspan.
@PewterReport: QB Derek Carr and WR Jordan Matthews staying after practice to throw and catch and work on timing. Haven't seen that before at @seniorbowl.
They both know they're the best there at their positions and developing a rapport with one another can only help each other. Smart move.
just read in the nyp, jets interviewed mathews last night. its early but atleast its something saying he is on the early radar
Apparently he had a bad first day and so-so second day. That doesn't mean anything though as the game itself usually is the end all be all. IE: Ansah
