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The Jets worked out Penn State QB Drew Allar over the weekend. The announcement was made by SNY’s Connor Hughes.
He also had his Pro Day in Happy Valley on March 19.
He looks the part at 6-5, 228 with a great arm. If you were to cast a QB in a movie, he would look like Allar.
But you could make a strong argument that this isn’t the way to go for the Jets in the draft.
There is so much more to the QB position than great size and a rocket arm.
Long-time OC and head coach Chip Kelly once said, “Sometimes the arm strength aspect of it is overrated. We’re not trying to knock over milk cartons at a county fair.”
Obviously, you can have a weak arm on the NFL level. You need to have a decent arm, but you don’t need a howitzer to be successful. The ability to read defenses, go through progressions, throw with anticipation, and with accuracy is more important than having a Katyusha rocket for an arm.
“It’s about if you can put the ball in the right spot at the right time … repetitive accuracy is the number one quality we’re looking for,” Kelly said in the same presser (in Philly) that he made the county fair reference.
And while Allar looks the part and can make all the throws, he seems to have significant accuracy issues.
“He’s not accurate. He can’t throw out a swinger to a running back who’s running away from him,” draft analyst Todd Mcshay said on his podcast. “He can’t complete a go-route, a post, a corner, a real route. He’s not.
McShay added: “Is accuracy not even a red flag. It’s a disqualifier for me.”
Here is the deal with the Jets related to the QB position and the 2026 draft.
They can’t go down the road of “looks the part with a great arm.”
That is fool’s gold.
They need a high-level processor who is good at going through his progressions and is accurate.
Now, it’s hard to know whether a guy can read NFL defense until he reads NFL defenses, that is why there are so many QB draft picks that don’t work out.
You are trying to discern whether somebody can do something they’ve never done before. In any hiring process, in any industry, that is a crap shoot.
But the default setting for any QB the Jets consider in this draft is where they good at going through progressions and accurate on the college level.
While a lot of times their first read is open in college, so you don’t need to go through progressions, it’s obviously not always open, so you need to look at the film, get cut-ups, of all the plays the QB’s first read wasn’t open, and see how he fared. All you gotta do is read these three lines from NFL Network’s Lance Zierlein’s scouting report on Allar to realize the processing stuff wasn’t great for Allar on the college level.
- Lack of rhythm and vision cause him to overlook open targets.
- Inconsistent processing coverage.
- Struggles to come off pre-snap ideas and alter his plan
Jets need a progressions guy, not a one-read guy, like they decided to go with last year.
That is why Alabama’s Ty Simpson is so intriguing.
“Recognizes coverage quickly and moves through progressions with pace,” Zierlein wrote about Simpson.
That’s the ticket.
Look, there are no guarantees Simpson will be a good NFL QB. There are no guarantees with any college QB making the leap to the NFL.
But I would error on the side of a college prospect who is accurate and can go through progressions.
Allar said before his Pro Day in State College:
“My game plan was to come out here and show teams what I can do from a throwing standpoint,” Allar told reporters.
Unfortunately for Allar and so many QB prospects with big arms, there is so much more to the game than just arm talent.
March 23, 2026
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