If Mitchell is even serviceable as a backup, they hit on the pick. A cheap 3rd OT for the next 3 years is great. Anything beyond that is just icing on the cake. A lot of fans have irrational expectations for players.
Benching Fant for Duane Brown and keeping Mitchell at RT is the current leader in the clubhouse. Fant better get his shit together or he'll walk next year
As much as JD gets grief for the OL, so far, Max Mitchell seems like a solid 4th pick. According to PFF, he's out-performing many of the picks in the 1st round. I don't have access to PFF, but here's an interesting read from jetsxfactor on Mitchell... HTML: https://jetsxfactor.com/2022/09/27/ny-jets-max-mitchell-outperform-rookies/
A lot of posters wanted JD to use the #4 pick on an OL. Instead he got a franchise CB with that pick and then picked what may be the best OL in 4th round. That's elite drafting
Indeed. Passing on Sauce would have been a massive mistake and JD would have been crucified. “Look at what so and so did with a 4th round pick getting a better OT and JD passed on a one in a life time CB for an average OT” yada, yada, yada we all know the drill
Which OT are you picking over Sauce? Our secondary would obviously take a big hit, let’s see how big an improvement we’d have at RT. Don’t pick Neal, he’s been straight trash so far this season. Iky and Neal have about the same numbers so dont say him either. Which OT are you picking over Sauce?
Over a larger sample size I would bet on the 1st round tackles over Mitchell. But, there is no denying that the combo of Mitchell and Sauce looks amazingly better right now than a 1st round tackle and 4th CB. I was not a proponent of drafting Sauce. I wanted to draft the sure thing in Icky. But both our picks look great. If Mitchell becomes our long term RT that combo by JD of Sauce and Mitchell could change this franchise. But careers are not defined by 3 games so I would not celebrate yet. But, both Mitchell's and Sauce's early success is pretty exciting.
Its been 3 games guys. Lets come back to earth. And, if were up to me we'd have gone with a core defensive lineman at 4, and tackle at 10. But I'd take any of the 5 1st round tackles over Max at this point. If time proves that wrong then great. It is highly unlikely though. I'm not saying Sauce is a bad choice. He is an end of the rebuild choice, which its starting to become obvious is where we are. But he may not even be the best CB this draft. Martin Emmerson, Cordale Flott, Roger Mc Creary, even Kaiir Elam have all been playing well, and all went much lower. Stingley Jr. has also, but he wasn't available to us. Like the tackle discussion, that doesn't mean they are better than Sauce. But so far they've been good. Its too early to start making judgments on this years draft.
I wanted OL at 4, not sure which I would’ve taken as I don’t watch a lot of college film, but that was my preference….I would’ve tried harder to resign Moses (yes, money talks in these cases) and I would’ve taken one of Neal, Cross or Iky whichever JD thought best. None have looked great so far but it’s only three games…shit we’ve made way more excuses for Zach over a larger sample size. Odds are one will be very good, one will bust, but too early to tell yet. Not saying Sauce isn’t a good pick and a need, because he is both, but I thought OL was more important than DB at this point, because I preferred to set up Zach as best as possible and eliminate all the damn excuses for his shit poor play last year. I wanted NO excuses. And if that meant postponing the D to next year, I was fine with that. as it is, we have a shit OL and our D STILL sucks. I’m hoping Mitchell keeps playing well, because that’s huge, and I’m good with the Sauce pick as he’s looked very good too, but I would’ve taken a different approach. I would never have had any OL plan that required Becton. Period. He’s toast and we called it before the draft. I doubt he will ever become a stud at this point…I hope he can play next year, but at least now it should be obvious that he can’t be counted on for 17 games. Not saying I’m right…just that my approach would have been different. at this point yes it’s hard to fault JD when three starting OTs are on IR, and while that’s a bad stretch of luck, it also isn’t really that far fetched to have assumed it was a risk. Becton has missed more games than he’s played, and he didn’t show up to voluntary workouts to just, you know, SHOW that he gave a shit. Fant had surgery in the offseason, right? So that was also a potential red flag. Brown I get has been durable, but he is 37 years old…always a risk in the NFL. Chaulk it up to typical Jets bad luck I guess, but I can’t help feeling that at least some of this was foreseeable….maybe not all three going down I get that, but there was certainly risk in our approach here. To me the grating one is relying on Becton…that I hated with a passion.
Absolutely true. I wanted either Sauce or a pass rusher so I was happy. But I don’t remember the last time we had so many draftees as instant contributors, in most cases exceeding expectations. I remember reading post after post last year that when we pick someone on the first round you expect him to be an instant contributor. True. As of now, Mitchell as a fourth rounder project has been exceeding all expectations while both first rounders have not. Sure is a very short data base to draw long term conclusions, but if it was the other way around, and it was on the Jets, the same people would be drawing conclusions on the spot.
Exactly! Imagine if we picked Neal and he is literally rated as the worst T in the draft by PFF, while Sauce is top 1/3d corner for another team. Come on now. With the LT problems we have, if we got Neal level play this year so far, we are definitely 0-3. The only reason we won a game is because OLine actually allowed Flacco a little bit of time, which would not have been the case with Neal over Mitchell. JD had a great draft. It was consensus at the time and seeing the guys play, it is consensus now.
173 snaps, and it's important to remember that Mitchell got thrust into the starting lineup RIGHT before the Ravens game. Many of these other rookies were slotted as starters throughout camp, so that's a really good sign. Finding a Fabini type in the 4th round would be fantastic, Jets haven't hit on a late round OL in quite sometime. Having AVT next to him is a beautiful thing, they look to have some chemistry together even though Mitchell didn't see much time with him in camp. Trying to find some sort of positive in this mess that's an OL right now.
Interesting that you brought up Fabini as a comparison as both Fabini and Mitchell were the 111th pick in each of their drafts.
