Blessing in disguise?

Okay, we get it . . .

I’m talking about the obsession with Jachai Polite’s bad spring.

He had a bad combine, which included a poor 40 time and some bad team interviews.

I get it.

But the number of questions about it to Mr. Coffee, Adam Gase and Polite are a little out of hand.

The way this guy is being talked about, you would think he’s Attila the Hun.

Gase put it perfect answering one of the myriad questions about Polite’s rough combine.

“I don’t think a lot of us had it figured out at 21, pretty sure a lot of you had some mess-ups in in your lives,” Gase said to the press.

Very well put. I know that certainly applies to me. I was pretty clueless at 21.

Now that shouldn’t be an excuse for bad combine interviews. He should have been more prepared. That is either his fault, his agent’s fault or a little bit of both.

But honestly, it was the best thing to happen to the Jets.

Say what?

Well, let’s put it this way, if Polite had a strong combine, good 40 time and aced the interviews, he would have gone in the first round.

The only other two double-digit sack guys from the SEC last year went in the first round – Josh Allen (Jacksonville Jaguars) and Montez Sweat (Washington Redskins).

There was a lot of first round talk buzzing around Polite during his final year at the University of Florida, a season he finished with 11 sacks, not easy to do in the SEC, college football’s best conference, which unlike so many other conferences, has pretty good offensive lines.

“Maybe two, three months ago, we looked at this kid as a top 15 pick,” said Athlon’s Braden Gall on SiriusXM’s ESPNU Radio after the Jets picked Polite.

So the bad stretch in the spring, which was unfortunate for Polite, might have been an early Christmas gift for the Jets.

We all know how badly the Jets need a game-wrecking outside linebacker. They have been shopping for one the last decade. But they didn’t address it with the third pick of the first round. Nick Bosa was already picked by San Francisco, and clearly the Jets didn’t love Allen, or at least not love him enough to grab the Montclair native at three.

So they stuck to their value board, and picked Quinnen Williams. You aren’t going to get many scouts who would say Allen is a better prospect than Williams, so Williams was the right value pick at three.

And then they had an edge-rusher, with first-round talent, slip to them in the third round, who they are comfortable with, in terms of their interviews with him. They know he has some growing up to do, but as Gase said, so do a lot of kids his age.

As for his 4.84 forty time. Don’t worry about that. First of all, edge-rushing has very little to do with 40 times. It’s more about first-step quickness. And secondly, he ran that bad 40 a 258 pounds. He’s going to play with the Jets at 245, so he will be faster at his Jets playing weight.

This was a really smart third-round pick for the Jets.

And no, he’s not the second coming of Genghis Khan.

May 14, 2019

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