The thing is that really good in your opinion or my opinion doesn't necessarily equate to "really good" in the Jets' Scouts or JD's opinion. Some may not have had the character the Jets want, and others may not have had the speed and/or blocking ability that the Jets want in there WRs. I think that JD was considering that since the rumor is that their top prospect was Jahmyr Gibbs, and he's about as much WR as he is RB. In addition, if they had gotten Gibbs, they may not have taken Izzy and may have taken a WR there. Another possibility is that with GW, Davis, Lazard, Hardman, Cobb, the TEs they have, Hall, and AR, they didn't think that they would need another WR taken early in the draft. There's some logic to that. JD didn't know that Davis was going to retire before the season even started. Cobb hasn't played at all like he did for GB last season. He was money with AR last season, especially on 3rd downs. Lazard hasn't played as well, either, and Hardman was a no show. If each of those 3 WRs played anywhere near where they did last season, and didn't drop nearly the passes they have, the Jets passing attack would be a lot better, and Wilson would be looking even better. As it turns out, that didn't work out, but I can't fault JD, the Scouts, or the CS for making the decisions they did. We don't know the Jets' thought processes, and simply just don't have enough information to be able to accurately assess whether their decision was a flawed one. In 2-3 years we can see how McDonald is playing, and how the WRs, and Anton Harrison are playing, but even then we can't say for certain whether the Jets made a mistake or not, as just because some of the WRs we liked and who were available at our pick may be playing well with their new team doesn't mean that they would have with the Jets or that they wouldn't have gotten injured here. Unless we can see the Jets' draft board, and know whether JD tried to trade down after Gibbs and Jones were taken, and if so, what, if any, offers he may have had, we can't make any kind of fair, rational assessment. We can only go by appearances.
Jones is obviously Broderick Jones, but who is this Myers you refer to in your very first sentence? I think there are valid points on each side of the draft philosophy issue. One doesn't want to draft purely out of need and wind up reaching for an inferior player, and one especially doesn't want to pass up on a player at another position that has elite talent, to take a player at that position of need. OTOH, when is enough enough? One of the things I hated about Mac was that he kept drafting DTs when we had already drafted 2-3. Need can't be totally ignored. IMO it HAS to be balanced with BPA. One also has to take into account positional value. Edge/Pass rushers are probably the 2nd most important position on the field after QB, but the same could be argued for the LT position, and these days the OT position in general, since many teams rotate their top pass rushers from left to right on play-to-play. With that said, I think your reasoning is severely flawed on several issues. If JD wanted to get the Rodgers deal done before June, then he evidently did need to do the pick swap 3 days before the draft. GB may have caved, but knowing how stubborn and dumb Gutekunst can be, I don't think he would have. It was all about saving face for him. Since JD has always gotten the better of his counterparts in trades before, I think we have reason to trust JD's assessment of the situation. I could be wrong, but I totally believe that if he thought Gutekunst would cave, that he wouldn't have done the pick swap. We then wouldn't have had Rodgers for mini-camp and OTAs, and the team as a whole probably wouldn't have benefitted as much as they have from his being there with the team from the early days and all the practices. Even if JD caved on the pick swap, I can't fault him. If he caved, it was because he thought it more important to get Rodgers in here early and let the chemistry be built, and the team benefit from day 1 from Rodgers' presence. As far as "consensus" picks, that's utter nonsense imo. Just because some so-called draft "expert" thinks a player is a 2nd round prospect doesn't mean that NFL scouts think the player is anything other than a 1st round prospect. IMO you're putting too much trust/faith in what some self-appointed "draft expert" in the media says over what NFL teams actually do. Have you ever actually gone back and looked at the record of these so-called "draft experts" and seen how the players actually performed? Most are wrong much more than they're right. Even though they have a lot more info than we do, they still don't have all the info that NFL scouts and GMs have, and they don't truly know the team's priorities and what they think of players. Remember that part of the process for these "draft experts" is calling scouts and GMs and asking their opinions, and those individuals lie during the draft process. They act like they "love" players that they have no intention of drafting, ignore players they hope to draft, and talk down some prospects that they covet in the hopes that other teams will let those players slide to them. In terms of "value" Harrison would have had more "value" for our team this season than McDonald has to date, but that doesn't mean that will go unchanged. "Value" is subjective and you're tying it to the "consensus 2nd round pick" idea, that is flawed. We don't know if JD was being truthful or not, but following the draft, JD said that they viewed McDonald as the best pass rusher in the draft, and that he had elite traits that NONE of the other pass rushers had. If he was truthful and accurate in that assessment, then those so-called "experts" who said that McDonald was a "consensus 2nd round pick" are full of shit and have no clue what they're talking about. Indeed, McDonald does seem to be faster and have more bend than any of the other pass rushers taken ahead of him. I think the so-called "experts" got it wrong on McDonald because his DC had him playing at DT/NT his last season at Iowa St. so his stats were way down. Now if JD was just covering for himself because he panicked when Jones was taken, then I'd agree with you, but we have actual video footage of JD saying that Pittsburgh or someone was going to take Jones at the Patriots' pick, so he knew that was going to happen, and had already moved to what he would do next. IMO the only rational explanation for it having taken so long for the Jets to turn in their pick to take McDonald was that JD was working the phones trying to swing a trade to trade down for Harrison, or maybe trade the pick for an OT already in the NFL. If McDonald was truly the BPA left on their draft board and JD didn't see a need at OT, the pick should have gone in immediately, but it didn't. Now maybe they debated taking a 24-year old Edge over a WR, but with Saleh wanting to send waves of fresh pass rushers at opposing teams, it's not hard to believe that was the consensus choice at that point if they couldn't work a trade down for Harrison. With regards to Harrison, once Jones was taken, I hoped that the Jets would trade down and take Harrison and get an extra pick or two. Unless you know for certain that JD didn't try to do that, or that he had a willing trade partner that was going to give fair value and then JD changed his mind and turned it down, it's bogus to criticize him for not making the trade. Now if it ever came out that JD did have a good trade down offer and passed it up, I might join you in criticizing JD for that decision, but that would depend upon how both McDonald and Harrison are playing 2-3 years from now. McDonald could be one of the top pass rushers in the NFL in that time, even playing part time in a rotation, a bust, or somewhere in between, and Harrison may be on the bench, out of the NFL, a solid RT, or a rising star at RT.
You have a lot of interesting points, but let me focus on a few key items. You mentioned JD got better of his counterparts before, which is true, but it hasn't really been the case lately. For Moore trade I am not sure if JD got the best out of Browns as he is doing pretty decent. JD certainly did not get the best of Jags on the James Robinson trade, it was in fact clearly the opposite. Trade for Chuck Clark was unfortunate due to injury, but it certainly worked out for the Ravens more so than us: to get something for a guy who never played a snap in 2023 and was going to be a FA. Mims trade didn't work out as we got nothing for him at the end. Heck even Blake Cashman trade looks like Houston GM evaluated better and easily got an upper hand as Cashman right now is playing amazing, even won defensive player of the week. Hardman trade so far is working well for KC, where the Jets paid 3 out of 4 mil of salary, and he already had 50 yard punt return. So, I would say while early JD was ripping teams off (Adams, Sam), lately in the past couple of years, it was not at all the case. In fact, as you can see above, recently other GMs got better of JD in player trades more so than the opposite. For the pick swap in Rodgers trade, I just don't see how any GM would risk keeping 110 mil of salary and actual CAP over a pick swap, I really don't. Even Tanny, who suggested GB had leverage said he thought Rodgers would go for 2nd in 2023 and 2nd/3d conditional in 2024. Pick swap was the last thing GB requested, according to JD. And even if you didn't think GB would fold, JD knew very well he could have waited until the 13th pick and then see if it makes a difference. Whether Rodgers gets here Tuesday or Friday makes no difference. The only logical explanation why JD pulled the trigger without waiting to see how the board unfolds is because he though at this range there are a lot of equal guys. That was confirmed when they suggested on One Jets Drive that he had McD and Meyer (a TE who went in second round) higher than Jones. The bottom line is, JD could have waited to see if he folds or not if he really wanted Jones. But he clearly didn't rate him. Now the most interesting point is whether a good draft analyst can do as well as NFL teams. I like guys like Connor Rodgers and Cole Thompson. Here is an example of Connor's draft board in 2022. Vast majority of the guys he hard rated high ended up doing well. He had Sauce and McDuffie ahead of Stingley too, who was considered to be a reach at #3, and both of these guys are doing better. Many other examples as well. Usually when GMs reached compared to this board, they turned out to be wrong. Even all the top guys JD drafted, he had very high. This year too, Dawand Jones was a consensus second round pick and could have been picked up by OT needy team like us in the 4th via small move up. Doing great so far and over two years younger than injury prone Carter Warren. Take a look at the link objectively and let me know what you think. My conclusion is that GMs with all of their resources don't really outperform the consensus of good analysts like this in average.
I disagree with the notion that JD has suddenly lost his ability to work trades. The trades you mentioned are bad examples. Moore was unhappy here, had had words with MLF, his stats weren't that good, and I think he even publicly criticized the team and all of that was well known. How was JD supposed to get anything of real value for Moore. It's totally irrelevant how Moore is playing now with the Browns. JD gave up a 6th round pick for Robinson, who had been a good RB. I don't remember the details, but I see that Robinson only rushed for 85 yards for the Jets, so the pick didn't escalate to a 5th round pick. I think I remember that Robinson wasn't healthy when the Jets acquired him. If that is correct then the Jaguars' GM lied about Robinson or the Jets training/medical staff blew it. Still the Jets had lost Hall, and needed a RB. A 6th round pick was not much to give up. It seems to me that you're just looking for something to criticize JD. To even mention the Chuck Clark trade is absurd. JD couldn't have known that Clark would wind up going down with a season-ending injury. Mims had done nothing for the Jets since his rookie season. He barely could get on the field and when he did he either didn't get open or dropped the pass when it was thrown his way. Did you really think that the Lions GM was stupid and that JD was going to be able to rob him? Blake Cashman had shown promise for the Jets, but he had become the poster boy for injury-prone players. He couldn't stay on the field. Again, there's no way that JD was going to get anything for Cashman. It's amazing that he got what he did. Again, how Cashman is playing now is irrelevant. JD and the Jets CS couldn't have foreseen that he would suddenly develop the ability to stay healthy. They had given him plenty of chances. If memory serves me correctly, he was a Mac draft pick. Saleh, Ulbrich and Boyer had no allegiance to Cashman and they gave up on him. It's also totally unrealistic to think that JD was going to be able to continually rip the other team off in trades. As for the Rodgers trade, it doesn't sound like that you read many of Gutekunst's comments and that you don't know much about his history with the Packers. He is very stubborn and sticks to his guns. You make it sound like it would have been so easy to acquire Rodgers. If JD hadn't done the pick swap, imo it would have been a lot longer than Friday before the Jets got Rodgers. IMO Gutekunst would have waited until after June 1 to trade Rodgers, and he would have then missed all of the installation of the offense in mini-camp and OTAs. Gutekunst could have even waited until the eve of training camp just out of spite. You also don't know whether Woody was pressuring JD to get the deal done. Just because the majority of the guys that Connor Rodgers had rated highly wound up doing well one season after the draft doesn't mean much. Where the players went, what those teams situations were like, the coaching they received, etc. It will be at least 3 years before that draft can begin to be evaluated accurately. By that time Rodgers' draft may not look so good. I like him, and think he is better than many of the draft analysts or "experts" out there, but that still doesn't mean that he knows as much as an NFL GM or that he knows what the Jets priorities are or what they are looking to accomplish in the draft. We also know that the draft is a crap shoot. Players who were rated very highly become busts and 7th round picks and UDFAs wind up becoming HOF players. To come to a conclusion like that based on one draft is falty logic at best. We're just gonna have to agree to disagree.
I am not looking to criticize JD, I am just looking at the evidence and make conclusions based on that without presuming something first and then looking at the facts to back it up. You said "JD has always gotten the better of his counterparts in trades before". I know that was true early, but I looked at ALL player trades he made in the last two years, and I did not always observe him getting better end of the deal recently. I am not even criticizing him for a lot of it, because these were not major trades, but I looked at all recent evidence, and found the statement you made inaccurate. I found other GMs benefitting more in aggregate than the Jets in the player trades he made in the last two years. You now say my examples are bad, but these are not examples, that's entire population of player trades for last two years. Unless I missed something that you can correct me on. And after reviewing entire body of work, I concluded that the statement that JD gets better of other GMs while was true early, is not true as of recent two years. That's all, there is not criticism of JD overall, I didn't even bring it up, just a conclusion based on evidence. As far as pick swap, I would agree with your point about June 1st if the trade was made on Thursday. That means JD waited as long as he could before the draft, but ultimately folded because GB wouldn't and he wanted Rodgers early. However, he still had 3 days, so June 1st point doesn't really apply. What's more logical is that JD didn't value pick swap that much due to valuing multiple players in that range similarly, and that was supported by the statement One Jets Drive showed where he had multiple guys ahead of Jones, one of whom went second round. As far as my conclusion regarding the draft boards, there is nothing wrong with the logic. if you are really interesting in arriving at your own conclusion independently based on data, I can pull up more of his or Cole's draft boards from earlier. However, if you already made determination that GMs do better than consensus and only seek evidence to affirm that, it defeats the point. I just observed that they don't do better in average than consensus and picked 2021 because this is where JD hit the ball out of the park. And he did that by selecting consensus best players at their positions. He also made several trade ups to ensure he gets these players, which is very hard to do, so kudos for that.
The Jets front office are the only people saying McDonald was "the best player available".. Plenty of people disagreed. Many said he was overdrafted. If a 1st round pick cannot see the field, he was simply not the best player available
“Sherwood, put on weight” “JJ, put on weight” “Clemons, put on weight” I wonder what the CS told our fast but undersized Edge rusher…. Someone is going to pay Huff $15mm next year. Maybe it’s the Jets. Maybe the Jets get a 1st round pick via trade and WMD fills the role in 24.
Earlier, JD had gotten the better of the trades, but as I said, no GM is going to continually rip off other GMs. Of course, things are going to reach a point where the trades are more balanced in terms of value or no team will trade with the Jets. I'm sorry if I misunderstood your intent, but it seemed like your intent was to criticize. As far as the pick swap, what if Woody ordered JD to make the trade when he did? Even if not, I think it's silly for you or anyone to think that you care more about keeping draft capital and getting the best deal in a trade than JD does. That's what he does for his career. I'm absolutely certain that he would not have agreed to the pick swap if he didn't have to. The link you posted for Connor's draft board isn't a draft board at all. It's just a list of ranking of defensive prospects by position. It's generic. He has no clue what the Jets priorities are, how they evaluate prospects, what they see as their greatest needs, etc. I would also be very surprised if he actually studied video of every single one of those prospects. He probably got those rankings from a variety of sources. Sorry, but again we are going to have to agree to disagree. If Connor Rodgers was all that and a bag of chips, he wouldn't be working as a generic football analyst, he'd be a GM for an NFL team, and I've never heard of the other guy you mentioned. At least I know of Connor Rodgers' work, posts, and I respect him, but that's a long way from believing that he knows just as much or more than JD.
How you gonna get a 1st round pick on a UFA? Would be foolish to not sign sign Huff during this season before he hits the market. Lawson prob gone so there’s still a role for WMD. And if he were to bust at least we’d have Huff for the future and not another hole.
JAX needs another pass rusher across from Josh Allen. JD should be trying to work a deal for Lawson..... risk the minute chance this could hurt the JETS if they miraculously make the post season....
I’m not sure I understand your question. Miami got more than a 1st for someone they drafted in the 5th round. Are you under the impression a player’s trade value is attached to his draft position and not his production? Lawson has had about 70 snaps over 6 games, so I’m not sure what “role” he plays which needs to be filled. In the scenario you propose ie signing Huff before he hits the market, does Huff or his agent have a say in signing now vs. hitting the market?
I know that and you know that…. Tag the people who don’t know that. Ie the ones saying “sign him now”
Hold your horses, folks. Will is not seeing the field - that is surely a reason for concern, but I still think he has a role in this team. Say, if he breaks out either next year, or in year 3, would you still rate him as a bust? Saleh runs a system defense, and he wants his players molded to specific roles. Probably Will is getting coached? Who knows? Last, but not the least, you can never have enough pass rushers. All I am saying here is, we should give the kid the benefit of the doubt for at least the first few years.
Isn't he a free agent after the year? That's a lot of leverage. Could tag him I suppose, gonna be expensive.
They can tag him, but he's worth every penny of that tag. He is up there with those guys who make that much money anyways.
I can see the player wanting to wait and see how much he can get in free agency, no question. His agent may be advising him to do just that. On the other hand, we can tag him and no player likes that. Also, sometimes a player wants to secure a long term deal when he can and avoid risking injury too… So there are reasons for both sides to do a deal in season and not get to free agency. Pros and cons to both options for both sides. Personally, I’ve always preferred to sign your own players a year early if possible and avoid that contract standoff later…it’s always cheaper to sign the guy a year earlier rather than having to pay market prices for a guy whose broken out. Hopefully he keeps playing like he’s been playing and JD gets him signed before he hits free agency.
Great point about the Jets being able to tag Huff. Counterpoint - I don’t believe Huff would have a problem signing a Tag worth btw $16-21m for 1 season so idt the threat of a tag is as big of a bargain chip as you do. Besides the threat of a $16-21mm 1 year contract, what other incentive does Huff have to sign now? re negotiating a contract with 1 year left on the previous contract: Huff’s contract was up last season, we signed him to a 1 year deal worth about double his career earnings (4.3m vs 2.3)
