"whatever it takes" - Jets GM and HC on how badly they needed a guy that isn' good enough to make the active roster on a shitty team. That pretty much sums up the personnel approach and talent evaluation of the JD regime.
If you look at his draft picks post mid second, there is really only Michael Carter who is solid. He missed big with higher picks too, but inability to find talent past top of the second round has really proved costly. I understand you cannot expect all lower picks to work out, or even most of them, but it is fair to expect say if you select two OTs in the mid round, one would be at least an OK back-up if not a starter. Particularly on OL, where @REVISion already posted stats before the hit rate is higher in mid rounds than other positions. I know some people give JD credit for infusing the roster with talent, which was bereft of talent before, and he should get some credit for that, but at what cost? He got good draft assets by trading away established players and building from scratch (Leonard Williams, Jamal Adams, Sam, etc...), which is why he did have more high picks than usual, but that also meant we had to watch shit product on the field for years for him to get these picks (plus better own picks due to constant sucking) and build up talent. And at the end of the day he still screwed up on most important decisions, like hiring bad coaches, not building OL until it was too late, trading away Sam, drafting Zach, etc, so we continued to suck even with some good talent on the roster. And yes, inability to get talent in the later rounds had a lot to do with it. For example, if he were able to hit on a few of these early and protect Sam and give him a couple of weapons, who knows where we would be right now...
JD also traded up increasingly often as his time with us progressed. The data on trading up is really ugly. It's generally one of the lowest EV things you can do in the draft. He was a better GM than Maccagnan but it's a lot closer than most of the general public realizes. Douglas gets this reputation as a decent drafter because he stockpiled high hit-rate picks but the guy was a horrible evaluator of talent. He was incapable of identifying talent unless there was a consensus that a prospect was a first rounder. JD was especially weak when it came to evaluating OL and WR prospects - two of the most important position groups that we needed to improve when he took over. Becton over Wirfs Trading up for AVT Getting 0 starters on OL after the 2nd round over 5 drafts (and only 1 starter after the 1st round) Mismanagement of the OL in FA Not having a first round grade on JSN, Flowers, or Addison Whiffing on Mims, Moore, and probably Corley Frantically trying to trade up for Rome Odunze Not even considering Bowers Having Corley ranked above Brian Thomas (!) The last two are just comically bad. Bowers is the best rookie TE in history and the best overall TE in the league already. Thomas has 73 catches for 1100 yards and 9 TDs compared to Corley's 3 catches for 16 yards and 0 TDs. It blows my mind that someone who has worked in professional football for as long as JD has could be so bad at identifying receiving talent. Nobody expected JD to hit on every pick, but imagine if we had Wirfs, Darrisaw, and one of JSN/Flowers/Addison on our team. We'd have one of the more promising young offensive cores in the league. We also wouldn't have had to take Olu, so you could probably throw Bowers into the mix too.
Good analysis. It’s even worse because someone who didn’t know anything about football probably could’ve gotten some of those things right by reading the amateur draft sites out there.
Wait didn't Corley score a TD .... oh OK never mind. That is a pretty damning list, but FWIW I do think that drafting is a real crapshoot. Everybody sucks at drafting. Bellichick couldn't draft a functioning wide receiver to save his life (and no, Edelman doesn't count - 7th round QB flyer). Sometimes you get lucky, most of the times you don't. It's the reason why almost every NFL team fires its GM every 5-7 years.
I mostly agree with this, which is why JD's propensity for trading up was so harmful. The only way for a lot of GMs to "win" the draft is by having more picks. But a lot of JD's mistakes on individual picks were pretty indefensible. Wirfs was almost universally rated above Becton. JD's buddy Daniel Jeremiah loved Becton though. Hitting on 0 OL picks after the second round is something only bad GMs do. JSN, Flowers, and Addison are all good NFL WRs. Passing on ALL of them when we badly needed WR help is indefensible. Bowers was clearly going to be very good. It was glaringly obvious on tape. Thomas had question marks, but Corley had a hell of a lot more of them. JD always thought he was the smartest guy in the room. And when you're not the smartest guy in the room, that is a fatal flaw.
It's not even after the second round. Anything beyond top of second round is pretty much a guaranteed miss. I mean once you get passed top of the second you can do better than JD just by drawing names out of a hat. Having Corley ahead of Thomas though is as bad as it can possibly get.
I get all that rating stuff, but Corley was a third round pick and Thomas a first rounder…not sure why we are comparing the two…JD passed on both guys to take Olu, and that was the right move for our team anyway
I think Saleh, or someone else in the Jets were saying in one of the interviews that they had Corley rated #4 WR on their board after the top 3. Then when he "slid" wanted to get him no matter what. @REVISion and I were just commenting how absurd it was for them to rate Corley above Thomas, even if the situation to make a selection when both were available didn't present itself. The complete inability to evaluate WRs is still staggering - he completely misevaluated Thomas.
I follow college football pretty extensively and make decent money betting on the smaller conferences. I never heard of Corley before the draft. I was shocked we drafted him before guys like Jalen McMillan who played in the National Championship in the nations best offense and Roman Wilson who played against him in that game. I also can’t imagine taking Corley over Jermaine Burton who looked like Steve Smith at Alabama.
Probably? If only Woody and company could have seen Douglas' incompetence for what it was as quickly as they did Idzik. If they'd fired him (and Saleh) two years ago like they should have, we're not in the position we're in now.
