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It almost feels like they need another arm.
Right now, the Jets have four players in their QB room – Justin Fields, Tyrod Taylor, Adrian Martinez, and Brady Cook.
Fields is on his third team in three years, and Taylor is on his seventh team. Martinez and Cook entered the league as undrafted players.
Hey, this combination of quarterbacks could work out great for the Jets. Who knows, but two journeymen and two UDFAs, maybe they should have drafted somebody this year and thrown him into the hopper.
The Jets have true belief in Fields, and their vision for him could work out great, but we can’t totally ignore past results. He is 14-30 as an NFL starter.
The Jets feel his best football is in front of him and feel they have a good plan for how to use him.
Taylor is a solid game-manager, who can “get you through a few games” as scouts like to say, but is perhaps not a long-term starter, but more of a very good relief pitcher.
As for Martinez and Cook, how many undrafted free agent quarterbacks have turned into starters in the modern era?
Kurt Warner?
It’s such a rarity.
Martinez and Cook are great athletes with good wheels and arm strength, but both struggled with ball placement and decision-making in college.
This is why these two players, who both run under 4.6, and have strong arms, and are both nicely built, both around 6-2, 220, went undrafted.
So, it just seems like there should be somebody else in there.
Look, this current plan could work out wonderfully, but considering Fields and Taylor are journeyman, and Martinez and Cook went undrafted for tangible reasons, maybe you need to have another player in the building, another player in their QB pipeline.
Fields, Martinez and Cook all have good raw tools, but each needs to improve their progression scans, field vision, and safety manipulation with their eyes.
The Jets have some good coaches to work with them, two long-time QB mentors in QB coach Charles London and passing game coordinator Scott Turner. We will see if London and Turner can take the processing of these three quarterbacks, or perhaps one or two of them, to another level.
But you could argue that maybe the Jets should have added a Shedeur Sanders, Riley Leonard, Dillon Gabriel, Quinn Ewers, Kyle McCord, Will Howard, Cam Miller or Kurtis Rourke in the middle to late rounds.
The plan in the first two rounds was outstanding – a stud right tackle in the first round and a starting-quality tight end in the second round.
There was no need to go for a quarterback in those rounds. All the quarterbacks in the first two rounds seemed like reaches where they were picked, all probably overdrafted where they went.
But taking a flyer on a QB, in the mid-late rounds, hoping to find the next Brock Purdy, might have been a good plan for the Jets.
Long-time NFL executive, Ron Wolf, best known for his time with the Green Bay Packers and Oakland Raiders, but who also spent some time with the Jets, believed you should pick a QB every single year, even if you have one.
May 26, 2025
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