Content available exclusively for subscribers
Once again, this guy’s takes on the Jets carry a lot of water
Talking about NFL Network draft analyst Daniel Jeremiah. Aside from being good at his job, he’s very close with Joe Douglas from their time together as Baltimore scouts.
How close are Jeremiah and Douglas? Well after Douglas got the Jets’ GM job, he almost hired Jeremiah to his staff.
And in his second mock draft for NFL.com, just like the first one, he has the Jets picking BYU QB Zach Wilson with the second pick of the draft.
“When you look at the skill set of Zach Wilson, he fits beautifully into the Shanahan offense they are going to run under Robert Saleh and (Mike) LaFleur. To me off-schedule, on-schedule, he’s outstanding in those areas,” said Jeremiah on NFL Network.
And these next two points are perhaps the most important ones:
“He’s an accurate thrower; he gets quickly through his progressions,” said Jeremiah.
First off, accuracy is huge in the NFL, which is why you often see some of the top quarterbacks around 65 percent in their completion percentage. For example, Aaron Rodgers career completion percentage is 65.05 percent, and last season, he completed 70.72 percent of his passes.
The Jets’ incumbent QB, Sam Darnold, has a career completion percentage of 59.8, which isn’t ideal.
The problem with a low completion percentage is it’s hard to sustain drives with too many passes hitting the ground.
But the second part of that last Jeremiah quote we ran might be even more significant – “He gets quickly through his progressions.”
The fact that Wilson is good at going through progressions should be a major selling point to the Jets. It’s been well-documented that Darnold struggles going through his progressions, and often fixates on his first read.
So if you are going to look for an upgrade from Darnold in the draft, getting a guy who’s more accurate, and better at going through his progressions, are two musts.
Now, in fairness, if should be pointed out, that doing through your progressions against UTSA, Western Kentucky and Texas State is a little different than doing that in the NFL. Let’s be honest, BYU didn’t have a very tough schedule last season.
So Douglas must discern whether Wilson’s accuracy and progression scans will continue to be excellent on the NFL level. That is often very tough to do.
But Jeremiah clearly feels his buddy should pick Wilson at #2.
“To me, he’s clearly the 2nd best quarterback (behind Trevor Lawrence),” Jeremiah said. “[This gives] Joe Douglas a chance to get his QB of the future. It makes a lot of sense.”
So if the Jets stay put at #2, and they trade Darnold, Wilson would likely be the pick.
However, it’s also possible that the Jets will show a tremendous amount of interest in Wilson, in order to make another team blow them away with an offer to move up to #2, too grab Wilson themselves.
In other words, it’s possible, there is a smokescreen element to this.
But in a QB-driven league, you have no chance unless you have an elite QB.
So if the Jets think Wilson has a chance at being elite, it’s hard to see them passing up on him, especially since he seems to be a very good fit for their new offense.
February 18, 2021
Premium will return by 9:30 pm on Friday.