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Can this actually be done?
In his latest mock draft, NFL Network’s Bucky Brooks has the Jets picking Oregon offensive tackle Penei Sewell with the second pick of the draft.
I don’t get too much into mock drafts, because they are mainly guesswork, but I want to get into something Brooks wrote about Sam Darnold in his explanation of picking Sewell.
“If the Jets’ new coaching staff believes Sam Darnold is fixable, New York could opt for an edge blocker to complete an O-line rebuild and enable the team to become immediately competitive under Robert Saleh,” wrote Brooks.
Is Darnold fixable?
Not sure about that, but he might be “maskable,” if that is a word.
In other words, you can’t make somebody really good at reading defenses, if it’s not in them, but you can cover it up with a great running game and good play-calling.
Remember that anecdote I shared about a former NFL scout who lives in the same neighborhood of a former USC teammate of Darnold, who told the scout that Darnold issue in college was “reading defenses.”
So if he struggled with it in college, and then during his first three years in the NFL, how all of sudden is Mike LaFleur going make him good at it?
What LaFleur can do is mask it to a degree, with the Kyle Shanahan system, which is more QB friendly than the first two NFL systems Darnold played in. Remember this quote we have run from Brooks?
“Shanahan’s system, the stretch bootleg system, creates a lot of easy opportunities for the quarterback,” said Brooks. “You just need to be mobile enough to get to the edge of the tackle box on the bootleg. If you can do that, you can play in this system, and with all the play-action, they make it easy.”
Darnold is mobile and athletic, so if the Jets can run the ball, that could create some easy throws for him in the new system.
In this system, Jimmy Garoppolo went to the Super Bowl with San Francisco; Jared Goff did as well with the Rams, and neither is a high level reader of defenses.
So maybe LaFleur and Saleh think this system can do for Darnold, what it did Garoppolo and Goff, but it should be pointed out, that both quarterbacks lost in the Super Bowl when the opposing teams did a good job shutting down the system, and these system quarterbacks floundered.
But hey, they did get to a Super Bowl. While you never want to lose in a Super Bowl, many Jets fans would sign up for the kind of seasons the Garoppolo and Goff had, for the 49ers and Rams respectively, in those Super Bowl runs, if you told them Darnold can do the same thing for the Jets in 2021.
So the bottom line is the Jets can’t necessarily “fix” Darnold’s field vision issues, but with a strong running game, and good play-calling working off that, they can mask it.
Corey Davis was asked today if he was told if Darnold will be the QB this year.
“That is my understanding,” said Davis.
But then again, what do you expect them to say to a free agent – “We are going to trade Darnold and pick Zach Wilson?”
Right now Darnold is the QB.
And if the Jets think LaFleur can mask the quarterback’s struggles reading defenses with his play-calling, it’s possible that Darnold can have some success, like Goff and Garoppolo
March 23, 2021
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