You can talk about the importance of getting steals in the later rounds, and it’s always good when you can do that, but let’s be honest, the biggest keys to an NFL roster are generally selected in the first and second rounds.
“My first two picks in the draft, I don’t want misses,” NFL Network draft analyst Daniel Jeremiah said a few years ago. “We want to romanticize about getting guys in the fifth and sixth rounds, but the league is really a first and second round league. The league is really comprised of a bunch of first and second-round picks and some others. If a guy comes in as a seventh-round pick, there is a lot of luck in that.”
The Jets have a golden opportunity this year to greatly enhance their roster and depth chart, with four picks in the top 44, two each in the first and second rounds.
And in the first two rounds, long-time Baltimore Ravens GM Ozzie Newsome taught Jeremiah that you need to pick guys who were consistent producers in college, not guys that took you on a rollercoaster ride with their play
“I go back to Ozzie Newsome,” Jermain said. “Give me the guy who has been the same guy from the beginning of the season to the end of the season. Maybe I’m sacrificing what a guy could be, but I don’t want to hope and wish with my first two picks. You have to nail it.”
It goes without saying that Darren Mougey and Aaron Glenn need to nail these four picks in the top 44.
There is no way around it.
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